Schuylkill River

The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It flows for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed April 1, 2011 from Pottsville to Philadelphia, where it joins the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries.

In 1682, William Penn chose the left bank of the confluence upon which he founded the planned city of Philadelphia on lands purchased from the native Delaware nation. It is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River, and its whole length was once part of the Delaware people's southern territories.

The river's watershed of about lies entirely within the state of Pennsylvania, the upper portions in the Ridge-and-valley Appalachian Mountains where the folding of the mountain ridges metamorphically modified bituminous into widespread anthracite deposits located north of the Blue Mountain barrier ridge.

Millions of tons of anthracite coal from Pennsylvania's Coal Region flowed by waterway and rail into Philadelphia to feed the iron and steel industry.

The source of the Schuylkill's eastern branch is in heavily mined land, one ridgeline south of Tuscarora Lake along a drainage divide with the Little Schuylkill River, about a mile east of the village of Tuscarora and about a mile west of Tamaqua, at Tuscarora Springs in Schuylkill County. Tuscarora Lake is one source of the Little Schuylkill.

The West Branch starts near Minersville and joins the eastern branch at the town of Schuylkill Haven. It then combines with the Little Schuylkill River downstream in the town of Port Clinton. The Tulpehocken Creek joins it at the western edge of Reading. Wissahickon Creek joins it in northwest Philadelphia. Other major tributaries include: Maiden Creek, Manatawny Creek, French Creek, and Perkiomen Creek.

The Schuylkill joins the Delaware at the site of the former Philadelphia Navy Yard, now the Philadelphia Naval Business Center, just northeast of Philadelphia International Airport.

Major towns

* Pottsville
* Reading
* Pottstown
* Phoenixville
* Norristown
* Conshohocken
* Lower Merion
* Philadelphia

Name

The Leni Lenape (called Delaware Indians by European settlers) are the original inhabitants of the area around this river. It remains unclear whether they historically had a single name for this river. There is evidence that the Lenape called the river ''Ganshowahanna'' (which means falling or roaring waters). There is also some belief that the Lenape called the river ''Tool-pay Hanna'' (Turtle River) or ''Tool-pay Hok Ing'' (Turtle Place). There is a tributary named Tulpehocken near Reading.

The first European explorers of the river were from the Netherlands, Sweden, and then England. It was through historical documents called various names, including ''Manayunk'', ''Manajungh'', ''Manaiunk'', and ''Lenni Bikbi''. The Swedish explorer called it ' or alternately ' or the Linde River. The (then believed) headwaters of the river, up near Reading, was later called " Tulpehocken" by the English.

The river was called the Dutch name ' (). As ' means "creek" (e.g. Dordtsche Kil) and ' (now spelled ') means "to hide, skulk" or "to take refuge, shelter", one explanation given for this name is that it translates to "hidden river", "skulking river" or "sheltered creek" and refers to the river's confluence with the Delaware River at League Island, which was nearly hidden by dense vegetation. This name has traditionally been credited to Arent Corsen (or Arendt Corssen), an agent of the Dutch West India Company who purchased land “on the Schuylkill River” in 1633. Another explanation is that the name properly translates to "hideout creek" in one of the Algonquian languages spoken by a Leni Lenape in their confederation.

History

The mighty Susquehannock confederation claimed the area along the Schuylkill as a hunting ground, as they did to the lands down along the Chesapeake Bay to the left bank Potomac River, across from the Powhatan Confederacy when traders first stopped in the Delaware and settlers arrived in the first decade of the 1600s.
With ample tributary streams, the Schuylkill was ground zero during the early years of the Beaver Wars, during which the Delaware peoples became tributary to the victorious Susquehannocks, an Iroquoian people also often in contention with their relatives, both the Erie people west and northwest through the gaps of the Allegheny in eastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania (between the upper Allegheny River and Lake Erie), and the Five Nations of the Iroquois, another Amerindian confederation eastwards from the right bank of the Genesee River through the Finger Lakes region of upper New York then down the Saint Lawrence.

The Lenape had settlements on the river, including Nittabakonck ("place where heroes reside"), a village on the east bank just south of the confluence of Wissahickon Creek, and the Passyunk site, on the west bank where the Schuylkill meets the Delaware River.

Patriot paper maker Frederick Bicking owned a fishery on the river prior to the Revolution, and Thomas Paine tried in vain to interest the citizens in funding an iron bridge over this river, before abandoning " pontifical works" on account of the French Revolution. In the next decades, pioneering industrialists Josiah White and protege & partner Erskine Hazard built iron industries at the Falls of the Schuylkill in Jefferson's administration, where White built a suspension bridge with cables made from their wire mill. During the war of 1812 the two took delivery of an ark of anthracite coal which was notoriously difficult to combust reliably and experimented with ways to use it industrially, providing the knowledge to successfully begin resolving the ongoing decades long energy crises around eastern cities.
The two then heavily backed the flagging effort to improve navigation on the Schuylkill, which efforts date back to legislation measures as early as 1762.

Needing energy resources and by 1816 disenchanted with the lack of urgency found in other investors to accelerate the anemic and underfunded construction rate of the Schuylkill Canal, the two jumped to option the mining rights of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which disenchanted stockholders were giving up on. They then waited until a charter to improve the Lehigh went delinquent, resulting in two groups of investors forming two complementary companies in 1818 that jump-started the industrial revolution: the Lehigh Coal Company and the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. Following White's plan, the latter company improved down river navigation on the Lehigh River, using his Bear Trap Locks design to deliver over 365 tons of anthracite to Philadelphia docks by December 1820, four years ahead of promises to Stockholders. The success, along with the pending opening of the first operable sections of New York's Erie Canal spurred stockholders of the Schuylkill Canal to finally fund the works. A project which had languished for over a decade got capitalized and began operations in 1822—the same year the Lehigh companies combined into the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, having had to raise additional funds for repairs due to badly ice-damaged improvements, a common problem with northern canals.

The success of these projects and the rosy promise of anthracite (a new wonder fuel in the day) to alleviate energy problems spurred canal construction for the next decade in the east, and commercial opportunities funded three decades of investment from Illinois to the Atlantic Ocean, including the ambitious 1824 Main Line of Public Works bill to connect Philadelphia with the newly emerging states of the Northwest Territory via the Allegheny & Ohio valleys at Pittsburgh and to Lake Erie— leveraging the wide-ranging branches of the Susquehanna River in the state's center. In the 1830s railway technology and new railroads grew in leaps and bounds, and the Schuylkill Valley was at the heart of these developments, as well as the new Anthracite iron and mining industries. From 1820 to the 1860s Iron works, foundries, manufacturing mills, blast furnaces, rolling mills, rail yards, rail roads, warehouses and train stations sprang up throughout the valley. Tiny farm villages grew into vibrant company towns then transitioned into small cities as a major industry and supporting businesses transformed local economics and populations swelled.

Pollution

Restoration of the river has been funded by money left for that purpose in Benjamin Franklin's will.

The river is known to have been on fire more than once throughout history, for example in November 1892 when the surface film of oil that had leaked from nearby oil works at Point Breeze, Philadelphia, was ignited by a match tossed carelessly from a boat, with fatal results.

Silt and coal dust from upstream industries, particularly coal mining and washing operations in the headwaters, led to extensive silting of the river through the early 20th century. The river was shallow and filled with extensive black silt bars. By the early 20th century, upstream coal operations contributed over 3 million tons of silt annually to the river.
In 1948, led by then governor James H. Duff, a massive cleanup effort began. Twenty three impounding basins were excavated along the river, to receive dredged silt. The 1945 Desilting Act helped begin this cleanup task.

The quality of the river has improved much over the past decades. A fish ladder to support shad

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