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Wissahickon Trail
Wissahickon Creek is a tributary of the Schuylkill River in Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties, Pennsylvania. Wissahickon Creek rises in Montgomery County, runs approximately 23 miles (37 km) passing through and dividing Northwest Philadelphia before emptying into the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. Its watershed covers about . Much of the creek now runs through or next to parkland, with the last few miles running through a deep gorge. The beauty of this area attracted the attention of literary personages like Edgar Allan Poe and John Greenleaf Whittier. The gorge area is now part of Wissahickon Valley Park in Philadelphia, and the Wissahickon Valley is known as one of 600 National Natural Landmarks of the United States. The name of the creek comes from the Lenape word wiessahitkonk, for "catfish creek" or "stream of yellowish color". On the earliest map of this region of Pennsylvania, by Thomas Holme, the stream is called ''Whitpaine's creek'', after one of t ...
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Geographic Names Information System
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau. It is a type of gazetteer. It was developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) to promote the standardization of feature names. Data were collected in two phases. Although a third phase was considered, which would have handled name changes where local usages differed from maps, it was never begun. The database is part of a system that includes topographic map names and bibliographic references. The names of books and historic maps that confirm the feature or place name are cited. Variant names, alternatives to official federal names for a feature, are also recorded. Each feature receives a per ...
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William Penn
William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans. In 1681, King Charles II handed over a large piece of his North American land holdings along the North Atlantic Ocean coast to Penn to pay the debts the king had owed to Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. This land included the present-day states of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Penn immediately set sail and took his first step on American soil, sailing up the Delaware Bay and Delaware River, past earlier Swedish and Dutch riverfront colonies, in New Castle (now in Delaware) in 1682. On this occasion, the colonists pledged allegiance to Penn as their new proprietor, and the first Pennsylvania General A ...
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George Lippard
George Lippard (April 10, 1822February 9, 1854) was a 19th-century American novelist, journalist, playwright, social activist, and labor organizer. He was a popular author in antebellum America. A friend of Edgar Allan Poe, Lippard advocated a socialist political philosophy and sought justice for the working class in his writings. He founded a secret benevolent society, Brotherhood of the Union, investing in it all the trappings of a religion; the society, a precursor to labor organizations, survived until 1994. He authored two principal kinds of stories: Gothic tales about the immorality, horror, vice, and debauchery of large cities, such as ''The Monks of Monk Hall'' (1844), reprinted as '' The Quaker City'' (1844); and historical fiction of a type called romances, such as ''Blanche of Brandywine'' (1846), ''Legends of Mexico'' (1847), and the popular ''Legends of the Revolution'' (1847). Both kinds of stories, sensational and immensely popular when written, are mostly forgotte ...
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Mom Rinker's Rock
Mom Rinker's Rock is a scenic outlook in Wissahickon Valley Park along the Wissahickon Creek in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located on a ridge on the eastern side of the park just a little north of the Walnut Lane Bridge, close by the statue dedicated to Toleration. The name of the outlook is derived from legendary stories about an event that supposedly occurred during or after the American Revolutionary War Battle of Germantown; the stories tell of American spies taking advantage of the rugged terrain of the Wissahickon valley to retrieve information from an informant named Molly Rinker (nicknamed "Mom Rinker"), who allegedly perched atop a rock overlooking the valley to drop balls of yarn which contained messages about British troop movements during the occupation of Philadelphia. Other stories speak of a witch named Mom Rinkle who had little to do with the Revolutionary War. History allows that the American General John ...
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Lenape
The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory included present-day northeastern Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River watershed, New York City, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley. Today, Lenape people belong to the Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma; the Stockbridge–Munsee Community in Wisconsin; and the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario. The Lenape have a matrilineal clan system and historically were matrilocal. During the last decades of the 18th century, most Lenape were removed from their homeland by expanding European colonies. The divisions and troubles of the American Revolutionary War and United States' independence pushed them farther west. ...
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Cresheim Creek
Cresheim Creek is a creek in southeastern Pennsylvania. Rising at Wyndmoor in Springfield Township (in a park near the USDA's Agricultural Research Service Eastern Regional Research Center, adjacent to the border between Montgomery County and Northwest Philadelphia), it runs about 2.7 miles (4.3 km) southwest, passing through part of Northwest Philadelphia and forming the boundary between Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, before emptying into the Wissahickon Creek at Devil's Pool not far south of the Valley Green Inn. The Cresheim Valley below Germantown Avenue is part of Fairmount Park. The former railbed within it (see section below) is also an easement for PECO powerlines, which take advantage of the former railbed's grading and open space. In October 2013, the City of Philadelphia extended Fairmount Park ownership of the creek valley almost to the Philadelphia-Montgomery border at Stenton Avenue as part of the Wissahickon East Project, with ongoing and future effor ...
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Shared-use Path
A shared-use path, mixed-use path or multi-use pathway is a path which is 'designed to accommodate the movement of pedestrians and cyclists'. Examples of shared-use paths include sidewalks designated as shared-use, bridleways and rail trails. A shared-use path typically has a surface that is asphalt, concrete or firmly packed crushed aggregate. Shared-use paths differ from cycle tracks and cycle paths in that shared-use paths are designed to include pedestrians even if the primary anticipated users are cyclists. The path may also permit other users such as inline skating. Contrastingly, Motorcycles and mopeds are normally prohibited. Shared-use paths sometimes provide different lanes for users who travel at different speeds to prevent conflicts between user groups on high-use trails. Shared-use paths are criticised for creating conflict between different users. Types Bridleways In the UK, cyclists are legally permitted to cycle on bridleways (paths open to horse riders), ...
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Morning On The Wissahiccon
"Morning on the Wissahiccon" (also called "The Elk") is an 1844 work by Edgar Allan Poe describing the natural beauty of Wissahickon Creek, which flows into the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. It borders between being a short story and a travel essay. Overview Poe criticizes tourists who focus on "the most beaten thoroughfares of the country" and do not look at the beauty of sites "far away from the track." He describes the area in detail and its wild beauty, in particular the Wissahiccon Creek itself. On one visit, he sees an elk on a cliff. The majesty of this "oldest and boldest" of elks is ruined when he realizes it was a domesticated pet, not a wild creature, belonging to "an English family occupying a villa in the vicinity." Poe refers to the writing of actress Fanny Kemble in this essay, saying it was she who first brought the beautiful area to people's attention in her "droll book", ''Journal'', in 1835. Publication history The work was first published as "Morning on ...
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Roxborough, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Roxborough is a neighborhood in the Northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is bordered to the southwest, along the Schuylkill River, by the neighborhood of Manayunk, along the northeast by the Wissahickon Creek section of Fairmount Park, and to the southeast by the neighborhood of East Falls. Beyond Roxborough to the northwest is Montgomery County. Roxborough's ZIP code is 19128. Most of Roxborough is in Philadelphia's 21st Ward. History The Native American trail called the Manatawny, now Ridge Avenue, was central to the well-organized development of farms and plantations within the area then known as Manatawna. The Court of Upland in England appointed local Swedish settler Peter Rambo to be the maintainer of the Manatawny road. In 1690, the road was renamed Ridge Road (it follows the crest of the ridge between the Wissahickon valley and the Schuylkill valley), and the area was renamed Roxburgh, likely named for Roxburghshire, Scotland, the ancestr ...
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Chestnut Hill West Line
The Chestnut Hill West Line is a commuter rail line in the SEPTA Regional Rail network. It connects Northwest Philadelphia, including the eponymous neighborhood of Chestnut Hill, as well as West Mount Airy and Germantown, to Center City. Route description The Chestnut Hill West Line branches off from Amtrak's Northeast Corridor at North Philadelphia station and runs entirely within the City of Philadelphia. Its terminal is named Chestnut Hill West to distinguish it from the end of the Chestnut Hill East Line (a competing line of the Reading Company until 1976, when SEPTA assumed operations). Some stations are less than half a mile apart, a characteristic more commonly seen in an urban rapid transit system rather than a commuter rail line. The line runs roughly parallel to the Chestnut Hill East, and the two terminals are rather close. The line is fully grade-separated. History The line was originally opened June 11, 1884 by the Philadelphia, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Rai ...
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Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Chestnut Hill is a neighborhood in the Northwest Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is known for the high incomes of its residents and high real estate values, as well as its private schools. Geography Boundaries Chestnut Hill is bounded as follows: * on the northwest by Northwestern Avenue (a county line and city limit, beyond which lies a panhandle of Springfield Township, Montgomery County that juts into Whitemarsh Township); * on the west by the Wissahickon Gorge (part of Fairmount Park) (beyond which lie Upper Roxborough and Andorra); * on the northeast by Stenton Avenue (a county line and city limit, beyond which lie Erdenheim and Wyndmoor, both in Springfield Township); and * on the southeast by the Cresheim Valley (part of Fairmount Park) (beyond which lies Mount Airy). ZIP code The USPS does not officially correlate neighborhood names to Philadelphia ZIP codes (all are called simply "Philadelphia" or "Phila"). However, the 19118 ZIP code is ...
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Manayunk/Norristown Line
The Manayunk/Norristown Line is a commuter rail service in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and one of the 13 lines in SEPTA's Regional Rail network. It has the fourth highest ridership and the highest operating ratio (58%) on the SEPTA Regional Rail network. Route Manayunk/Norristown Line trains originate at and take the West Chester Branch to reach 30th Street Station. From there, they use the Center City Commuter Connection of the SEPTA Main Line, making all stops between 30th Street Station and North Broad station. From North Broad, trains use the Norristown Branch, traveling through Philadelphia's East Falls and Manayunk neighborhoods and Conshohocken before reaching Norristown. At the Norristown Transportation Center, commuters can transfer to SEPTA surface buses or the SEPTA Norristown High Speed Line to 69th Street Transportation Center. From the Norristown Transportation Center, trains continue to and . Until 1981, additional passenger service continued from Norristown o ...
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