Mill Pond at Spring City PA
, by John Urbanski, 1 min reading time
When the Pennsylvania R.R. decided to run a line on the Spring City side of the river. They chose to divert the Schuylkill River.
When I first started walking the Schuylkill River Trail, I was curious about the pond in Spring City. At the time I had no knowledge of the Schuylkill Canal or of the former railroad that the trail runs on today. The pond was just a nice location to get photos of herons and geese. I found a 1847 map of the area, and it looked like the Schuylkill River had a different path than it does today. This 1946 aerial photo shows it more clearly. Yes, the path of the Schuylkill River was changed. The pond was part of the river.
The Philadelphia and Reading railroad ran on the Royersford side of the river. When the Pennsylvania R.R. decided to run a line on the Spring City side of the river. They chose to divert the river by digging a new channel in Royersford and fill in sections of the of the old channel to lay down tracks for the Schuylkill Division of the railroad. The cut off section of the river formed a pond. Because of the paper mill located along the pond, it was named Mill Pond.
The Penn R.R. illustrations show the plans to divert the river. At the time, Spring City was known as Springville. The first scheduled train through Spring City was in September 24, 1884. The last passenger train to run along the tracks through Spring City was in 1952. Today, the Schuylkill River Trail runs on the old railroad line. A section of the Schuylkill Canal can still be seen from Church Street. The strip of land between the canal and Mill Pond was the towpath where mules and horses pulled barges full of coal. The canal section is still filled with water and is only about 1,000 in length, but still worth talking walk down the hill to take a look at.
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