Thomas Mill Covered Bridge

Saturday afternoon.

Evening ride

Forbidden Drive, late April.

Forgotten beauty

The ruins of this fountain, which must have been beautiful when it was whole, emerge every winter when the undergrowth recedes. You will find it along Forbidden Drive near Lincoln Drive. By mid spring is has disappeared again.

One gentleman

Blue Stone Bridge, early Saturday morning, looking west.

Four gentlemen

Blue Stone Bridge, early Saturday morning, looking east.

Ten Box Shelter

It's known as Ten Box Shelter. Built by the WPA in 1940, it served as the location of the last of a line of ten locked phone boxes used by park guards.

In August of 1986, two of my best friends from high school, Chris Brown and Brian Bowers, visited me in Philadelphia. I was living in the Art Museum area then, but had already fallen in love with the Wissahickon. I thought it would be a great idea for us to take the R8 train line all the way out to Chestnut Hill, hike the mile or so to the northern most entrance to the park, and then walk the ten or twelve miles back to my apartment.

It was a typical day in August for Pennsylvania, hot and humid, cranking up to the inevitable climax, a horrendous thunderstorm, which hit us exactly as we rounded the bend toward Ten Box Shelter. We dove inside to wait it out. As soon as we got inside the rain came down in torrents. Gusts of wind bent the surrounding trees. At the height of it all we couldn't see more than fifteen or twenty feet beyond the shelter. Then it all broke as suddenly as it had started. The sun was out. Birds sang. We kept going.

Gone fishing

Magargee Dam, Saturday morning, opening day of trout season. See Fishin' the Wissahickon.

Serene reminder of a troubled time

This guardhouse, which stands near the intersection of Kitchen's Lane and Forbidden Drive, was built in 1938 by the WPA. In the late 1930s, during the height of the Depression, workers participating in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built a number of similar buildings throughout the Wissahickon.

Catfish and waffles

Valley Green Inn, Saturday afternoon, around 2:30.

In the middle of the 1800s, as the Wissahickon became a popular destination for tourists and day trippers out from the city, several road houses sprang up to cater to their desires for a meal or a drink. Only two of these buildings exist today: Wissahickon Hall, which now serves as the headquarters for the 14th police district, and Valley Green Inn, which is still a restaurant. A favorite dinner of the day was something called "catfish and waffles."

Catfish and waffles began with fried catfish and a relish. A steak of beef followed, with fried potatoes, generally a simple form of what we know now as hashed brown. Then came stewed chicken and the waffles. And after the chicken and the waffles, the coffee. Dessert was served at some places, too, but not invariably. As a veteran of many bouts with catfish and waffles said to me, You more often had ‘catfish and waffles’ with a wink than with a dessert. For my part I liked beer with ‘catfish and waffles.’ Catfish is a rich fish. It is fried in butter. That makes it richer. Good steak has streaks of fat through it, and there is butter in hashed-brown potatoes. Stewed chicken with gravy is rich too, even if the waffles sop up a good deal of the gravy. Coffee is not enough to settle such a dinner. You need a good hoppy beer. I know those liked a sour wine, a Rhine wine or the like. The trouble with such was that it took too much of it, and it came high. You wouldn't want whiskey after ‘catfish and waffles.’ Beer was the thing to settle it. It would do the trick.
-- The Wissahickon Hills, Cornelius Weygandt, 1930

Thomas Mill Bridge

Historic Thomas Mill Bridge is the last remaining covered bridge within the city limits of Philadelphia. You will find it along Forbidden Drive, near mile post 1, about a half mile below the parking lots at Bell's Mill.

I'm having difficulty finding a precise history of the bridge, but it most likely dates to the middle of the 1800's. The structure was restored in 1938 by the WPA, and in 1999 by the City of Philadelphia.

These photos were taken late Friday Morning.

Out of season

This photo was taken in the middle of the afternoon on Monday, February 19. That the temperature was around 65 degrees Fahrenheit made this forgotten Christmas wreath on the door of a WPA constructed guardhouse at the intersection of Bell's Mill Road and Forbidden Drive seem all the more out of season.

Couple

Looking south down Forbidden Drive from Bell's Mill Road, around 3:30 in the afternoon, Monday, February 18.

Washington and Lincoln

This plaque commemorates a local skirmish during the Battle of Germantown fought along the stretch of the Wissahickon that now borders, more or less, along Lincoln Drive. The rock to which it is fastened, for reasons unknown to me, is known as Washington's Rock. Since it is located just off of Lincoln Drive -- named for Abraham Lincoln -- it seemed an appropriate post for Presidents' Day.

The plaque, being over a hundred years old, and showing the effects of both nature and graffiti, is a bit hard to read. Here is what it says:

ON THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN, OCTOBER 4, 1777, THE PENNSYLVANIA MILITIA, UNDER GEN'L JOHN ARMSTRONG, OCCUPYING THE HIGH GROUND ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE CREEK OPPOSITE THIS POINT, ENGAGED IN A SKIRMISH THE LEFT WING OF THE BRITISH FORCES, IN COMMAND OF LIEUT-GEN'L KNYPHAUSEN WHO OCCUPIED THE HIGH GROUND ON THE EAST SIDE ALONG SCHOOLHOUSE LANE.
-- ERECTED BY THE PENNSYLVANIA SOCIETY OF SONS OF THE REVOLUTION, 1907

Not evidence of life on Mars

That forty-five-degree angle gash in the rock face is what is left of a hole drilled to accommodate explosives when the roadway that is now Forbidden Drive was being blasted out, probably in the 1850s. You can find it, as well as a couple of others, in the massive outcropping of rocks on Forbidden Drive half way between Lincoln Drive and the Blue Stone Bridge.

Lincoln and Forbidden Drives

Forbidden Drive, so called because motor vehicles are prohibited, runs for a little over five miles, from Lincoln Drive to the south, to Northwestern Avenue to the north. Paralleling the Wissahickon its entire length, it is the main road through the park.

Taken on Thursday, February 14, at the beginning of the evening rush hour.

A thing of beauty

Wednesday, February 6, a little after noon.

The inn at Valley Green , three and three-quarter miles from the creek's mouth, and a mile from the Germantown Avenue, is a rendezvous of and delightful refreshment station for all. For many years a committee of public-spirited women have had it in their care. Here ends navigation for canoes, and here in winter there is excellent skating. Just above the inn Springfield Avenue comes down from St. Martin's over an arched bridge which is a thing of beauty.
-- The Wissahickon by T. D. Daly, 1922

Duck. Duck. Goose!

Tuesday, February 5, a little after noon, Valley Green. The sky was overcast, but the temperature was pushing sixty, and it felt every bit of spring. Someone was feeding bread to the ducks and geese, and I had my camera ready.

Face the face

Detail from an old water trough along Forbidden Drive between mile posts 4 and 4 and 1/2.

One of the delights of driving on the Wissahickon was the stops at watering troughs. Young bodies develop growing pains if too long subjected to the decorous sitting-still proper to a Germantown wagon. We always climbed down while father allowed Don or Nellie to have a drink at any of the watering places along the drive.
-- The Wissahickon Hills, Cornelius Weygandt, 1930.

Looking good for one hundred

Sunday afternoon, January 27.

The Walnut Lane Bridge turns one hundred this year. When it was constructed at the turn of the last century, it transformed the neighborhoods of Roxborough and Germantown, making it possible to travel from one to the other in minutes rather than in a day. It was a world class undertaking in engineering, being the largest poured concrete structure in the world, as well as boasting one of the largest central arches. Germantown's Cliveden of the National Trust will host an exhibit later this year commemorating the anniversary of the bridge's completion.

H'm, this would look good as a beer label.