Wingohocking Creek

Brook In The City


The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook? I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed. The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame. Is water wood to serve a brook the same? How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run --
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps. No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep. Robert Frost



HAIKU

Spring rain pounds on black
cracked streets. Far below
Wingohocking sings.

-Lisa



Two Creeks: The arms that embrace America's Backyard.Friday, July 22, 2011 at 3:27pm
[This paragraph is from Wikipedia and speaks to why the the Wingohocking Creek is important and should not be forgotten.]



Pastorius' original plan of Germantown in 1688. The town lay on a gentle hill between 2 creeks that could provide transportation and power. Pastorius had devised a simple plan for a town, with lots parceled out along one long main thoroughfare, where settlers could build their houses. He required land good for tilling because the emigrants would need to grow their own food to survive. Pastorius and Penn became good friends, and they often discussed plans for the new settlement over dinner. The land originally promised to Pastorius was supposed to be level and along a navigable river, and Pastorius had paid for 6,000 contiguous acres. However a suitable tract of land near Philadelphia was unavailable on the Delaware River, because level ground there was valuable and most of it had already been sold. Penn suggested land near the Schuylkill Falls (East Falls), but it was too steep for Pastorius's plan, so as an alternative Penn suggested land a little further east, near the top of a gentle hill between two creeks, and Pastorius agreed. Germantown was thus founded along a Lenni Lenape trail four miles north of Philadelphia, between the Wissahickon and Wingohocking creeks. Pastorius had the land surveyed, and over the first winter the families lived in downtown Philadelphia while struggling to clear the land for their makeshift log houses. Germantown became a separate and self-sufficient town of Dutch and German speakers.