Wissahickon Valley Park

Wissahickon Valley Park — a wild schist gorge inside the city limits

Roughly two thousand acres of forested gorge in northwest Philadelphia, cut by a creek that falls more than a hundred feet over its last seven miles. The valley became public land in 1867, when the state legislature folded it into Fairmount Park to keep sewage and mill waste out of the city’s drinking water, and its wooded core was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1964. It is the second-largest park in Philadelphia after Fairmount Park itself, and the one place in the city where you can walk for an hour without hearing an engine. Important to say plainly: this is a municipal park run by Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, not National Park Service land. The National Natural Landmark title is a federal honor, not federal ownership.

Highlights

• Forbidden Drive — the old Wissahickon Turnpike, graded between 1823 and 1856, permanently closed to motor vehicles in 1924 and renamed for the ban; a wide, level gravel route that runs the length of the gorge beside the water and carries walkers, runners, cyclists and horses at once.
• Valley Green Inn — put up in 1850 by Edward Rinker, who leased three acres from the miller Thomas Livezey and opened a temperance hotel with rowboats on the creek; bought by the Fairmount Park Commission in 1872 and the last Wissahickon roadhouse still working as a restaurant.
• Thomas Mill Covered Bridge — the only covered bridge standing inside a major American city, a crossing that has existed at this mill site since the eighteenth century, rebuilt by Depression-era federal work crews and restored again in 1999.
• The Toleration statue — a Quaker figure carved by Herman Kirn in 1883, the gift of the merchant John Welsh, planted on a rock shelf high above the water to honor William Penn’s promise of religious liberty.
• Tedyuscung — John Massey Rhind’s 1902 figure of a kneeling Lenape leader shading his eyes toward the valley, set above Council Rock, where Lenape gatherings are remembered.
• Fingerspan — Jody Pinto’s 1987 weathering-steel footbridge shaped like a hollow finger, fabricated in part from a ship’s staircase and flown into the gorge by helicopter, one of the boldest public artworks ever installed in an American park.

What’s inside

The park protects the final seven miles of Wissahickon Creek plus the mouth of Cresheim Creek, which runs about 2.7 miles down from Springfield Township and divides Mount Airy from Chestnut Hill. Around the water lie some fifty miles of trail and a startling density of surviving early industry, colonial stonework and outright eccentricity.

• Historic RittenhouseTown — where William Rittenhouse built the first paper mill in British North America in 1690; a National Historic Landmark since 1992 and the ancestral home of the family that later gave Rittenhouse Square its name.
• Glen Fern, the Livezey House — a dwelling of about 1700 grafted onto a gristmill, with a dam rebuilt by federal work relief crews in the 1930s.
• The Monastery — a stone house of about 1750 that now serves a saddle club, which is why you meet horses on the bridle paths on an ordinary weekday.
• Hermit’s Cave — the meditation cell tied to Johannes Kelpius, the German mystic who led the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness to this creek in 1694 to await the end of the world.
• Ten Box — a stone shelter built in 1940 by the Works Projects Administration for the mounted park guard, fitted with a telephone and a stove.
• Devil’s Pool — the plunge basin where Cresheim Creek meets the Wissahickon, ringed by schist boulders and overlooked by a rock carved with a line of Shakespeare.

What to do and who it’s for

• Walkers and families with strollers — the gravel route is level, unpaved and car-free from end to end, so a toddler on a balance bike and a grandparent can share it without anyone flinching at traffic.
• Trail runners — the upper trails climb the gorge walls in short, steep pitches over exposed schist, giving genuine vertical gain a few miles from a subway line.
• Mountain bikers and horseback riders — the upper trails are open to off-road cycling and riding with a Philadelphia Parks and Recreation trail permit; the main gravel route needs no permit at all.
• Birders and naturalists — great blue herons work the shallows, hawks ride thermals along the gorge rim, and white-tailed deer are numerous enough that the city runs an active browse-management program.
• Anglers — the creek and its tributary carry stocked trout, smallmouth bass and rock bass, and quiet weekday mornings on the water are the reason many locals come at all.
• History walkers — mills, a covered bridge, two nineteenth-century statues on cliff tops and a 1690 papermaking site can be strung into a single half-day loop.

Getting there and practicalities

The gorge cuts through northwest Philadelphia, wrapping Roxborough, Manayunk, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. SEPTA Regional Rail delivers you to its edges: Wissahickon Station on the Manayunk/Norristown Line at the southern mouth, St. Martins and Highland stations on the Chestnut Hill West Line for the upper valley, and Chestnut Hill East Line stations on the northern rim. The Wissahickon Transportation Center is the bus hub for the southern end. There are no gates and no ticket; standard city park hours run dawn to dusk, and the police discourage after-dark visits because the gorge has almost no cell coverage. Allow two hours for a creekside out-and-back from the inn, and most of a day if you intend to climb to the statues and cross the covered bridge. Wear grip: the schist is slick when wet.

When to visit

Spring is the loudest season here, when snowmelt and rain push the creek hard over the old mill dams and the understory fills with spring beauty and trout lily before the canopy closes. Summer turns the gorge into a cool green tunnel twenty degrees more bearable than the row-house blocks above it, and this is when the city’s warnings about the creek matter most, because swimming in Philadelphia’s streams is prohibited and the popular plunge pool sits more than half a mile from the nearest trailhead with no reliable phone signal. Autumn is the postcard: tulip poplar and beech going gold above a gray-brown creek, and the covered bridge photographed more in six weeks than in the rest of the year combined. Winter strips the leaves and hands you the geology instead, with the folded schist walls, the mill ruins and the stonework of the 1908 concrete arch overhead all suddenly legible.

Worth knowing

The rock underfoot gave its name to a geological unit studied worldwide. The Wissahickon Formation, mostly pelitic schist and gneiss shot through with mica flecks and small garnets, was first described in this gorge; its sediments were cooked into metamorphic rock during the Taconic mountain-building event roughly 430 to 500 million years ago and reworked again in the Alleghanian event some 250 to 290 million years ago. Human history layered on quickly: Kelpius and his mystics arrived in 1694, William Rittenhouse had been making paper since 1690, and by the early 1800s dozens of mills lined the water. Edgar Allan Poe published a rapturous sketch of the stream in 1844, and the Philadelphia-trained painter Thomas Moran worked here before he ever saw Yellowstone. The defining modern moment came in 1920, when roughly a thousand protesters on horseback and twelve thousand on foot rallied against opening the valley road to automobiles; the ban became permanent in 1924, the same year the Friends of the Wissahickon formed as the valley’s stewards. The Wissahickon Day Parade still marks that victory. When the Fairmount Park Commission was folded into Philadelphia Parks and Recreation in 2010, the Wissahickon was recognized as its own management unit rather than an annex of Fairmount Park.

Visitor tips

• Start at the inn if you want the classic picture and the café, but start from the lower café end if you are coming by transit from Center City and want the flattest approach.
• Download your map before you go in. Cell service dies inside the gorge, and the upper trail network is a genuine maze of unnamed side paths.
• If you plan to ride a mountain bike or a horse on anything other than the main gravel route, sort out the city trail permit in advance rather than at the trailhead.

Questions and answers

Is this a national park? No. Wissahickon Valley Park is city-owned and managed by Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. Its 1964 National Natural Landmark designation is a federal recognition program administered by the National Park Service, but no part of the valley is national park land, and no federal hours or rules apply.

Can you swim at Devil’s Pool? No. Swimming in Philadelphia’s creeks, streams and rivers is prohibited, and this particular spot combines submerged rock, poor water quality after rain, no cell signal and a rescue approach of more than half a mile on foot.

Do I need a permit? Not for walking, running or cycling on the main gravel route. A Philadelphia Parks and Recreation trail permit is required for off-road cycling and horseback riding on the upper trails.

How long is the main route? The car-free gravel route runs the length of the gorge, several miles end to end, and is flat enough that most people underestimate how far they have gone before they turn around.

Are dogs allowed? Yes, on leash, and the gravel route is one of the most popular dog walks in the city. The creek is not a designated swimming area for animals either.

Is the covered bridge really unique? It is the only covered bridge that survives inside a major American city. A crossing has stood at this mill site since the eighteenth century; the present timber structure was rebuilt during the Depression-era work programs and restored in 1999.

What is the best entry point for a first visit? The inn at the middle of the valley, because it puts the creek, the gravel route, the covered bridge and the trail up to the statues all within a comfortable half-day radius.