Early Use As An Industrial Waterway
Pennypack Creek was once the site of several mills. When William Penn founded the province of Pennsylvania in 1682, the Pennypack valley was occupied by Swedish colonists, who continued to live as English settlement began. Penn ordered the first bridge built across the creek along the King's Highway (now Frankford Avenue) in 1697; the bridge still stands. Despite the lack of navigability beyond the fall line (near the Frankford Avenue bridge), several early settlers built mills along the Pennypack, including Penn's "Pemmapecka Mill," built in 1701. The mills contributed to the growth of Holmesburg, the neighborhood near the mouth of the creek, and provided local farmers a place to sell their grain that was nearer than the city of Philadelphia. Fetter's Mill was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
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