Mill Creek (Schuylkill River)

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The Mill Creek rises in Montgomery County and runs for five miles (8 km) in a southeastern direction to the Schuylkill River where it debouches in the area of the The Woodlands Cemetery. In a patent, the original name given by the Lenape was Nanganesey. It was called Quarn creek by the Swedish settlers, and was listed by Manson's Great Mill Fall (Monson?), Mill creek and Little Mill creek.^[1] The name of the creek comes from the fact it was used to power factories at Grays Ferry.

1 Area
2 History
3 Current
4 Bibliography
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Area

The path of the creek bisects West Philadelphia and covers approximately 5,000 acres (20 km²). The stream was known to have been fast-flowing (10 miles per hour) and a fast-flooding waterway with the capacity to discharge 300,000 cubic feet per minute into the Schuylkill.

[edit] History

Clark Park bowl

Before urban development of the area, the creek was known to flood the countryside, destroying crops and create seas of mud.

During the development of West Philadelphia, stream beds were covered with cisterns and a layer of fill deep enough to level the topography of the area to that the city could plat properties into a regular grid. This process then tried to incorporate the city’s sewer system into the areas natural drainage. Covering the creek, begun in 1869 and completed around 1895, allowed the grid of rowhouse development to continue toward the city's western edge at Cobbs Creek.^[2]

A prominent feature of Clark Park is its "bowl," once a mill pond fed by the creek.

[edit] Current

Montgomery County has begun an effort to restore the creek's watershed through its Mill Creek Stream Restoration.^[3]

Spotty maintenance of the cistern and natural erosion has caused periodic collapses of the buildings above. In the 1930s there was a collapse of homes on Walnut Street between 43rd and 44th Streets undermined by the creek. There have been road collapses on 43rd Street, south of Walnut. In 1955 the block of Sansom Street between 44th and 45th Streets collapsed and was condemned. The creek undermines the roadbed where the Route 34 and Route 13 trolleys cross 43rd Street.

[edit] Bibliography

Ann Whiston Spirn, The Language of Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 160-72. (for a discussion of the suppression of Mill Creek in Philadelphia and efforts to recognize the lost stream)
Adam Levine, "From Creek to Sewer: A Philadelphia Story," in Philadelphia Drainage History