Mill Creek (Philadelphia)

For other places named "Mill Creek", see Mill Creek (disambiguation).

Mill Creek
River
The bowl in Clark Park was once a mill pond fed by Mill Creek
Country	United States
State	Pennsylvania
Source
- location	Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
Mouth
- location	Schuylkill River

Mill Creek rises in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and runs for five miles (8 km) in a southeastern direction to the Schuylkill River where it debouches in the area of 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.

This creek has given its name to a neighborhood in Philadelphia that it flows through, although the creek itself is all but invisible, under the streets, as described below.

The creek bisects West Philadelphia, draining about 5,000 acres (20 km²).

Development

Mill Creek Sewer, ca. 1883, at 47th Street and Haverford Avenue in West Philadelphia. Depicts the laying of a section of the 21-foot (6.4 m) sewer pipe that was used to encapsulate and bury Mill Creek. The project ran from 1869 to 1894.

Originally, Mill Creek was fast-flowing (10 miles per hour) and fast-flooding, with the capacity to discharge 300,000 cubic feet per minute into the Schuylkill. It was known to flood, destroying crops and creating seas of mud.

As urban development began in West Philadelphia, the city covered several stream beds with cisterns and a layer of fill deep enough to level the land so that it could be platted into a regular street grid.

In 1866, a land survey determined that Mill Creek should be drained. The covering of Mill Creek began in 1869, encapsulating the watercourse in a 20-foot (6.1 m)-diameter drainpipe said to be the largest sewer pipe in the world at the time.^[2] It was completed around 1895, allowed the grid of rowhouse development to continue toward the city's western edge at Cobbs Creek.^[3]

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

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

Montgomery County has begun an effort to restore the creek's watershed through its Mill Creek Stream Restoration.^[4]

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

See also

Philadelphia portal

• List of rivers of Pennsylvania

External links

• phillyh2o.org
• West Philadelphia, "The Genesis of 'The City Across The River'"
• millcreekurbanfarm.org

References

1. ^ Philly H2O: Ledger Creek Names 1879
2. ^ How Philadelphia’s rich watershed became a sewer shed, September 1, 2010
3. ^ Philly H2O: Cobbs Creek Historical Overview
4. ^ http://www.theamericansurveyor.com/PDF/TheAmericanSurveyor_Lathrop-SpellingSustainable_June2007.pdf

Coordinates: 39°56′49″N 75°12′11″W / 39.947°N 75.203°W / 39.947; -75.203