Spanning 2,000 acres with more than 50 miles of trails, Wissahickon Valley Park in northwest Philadelphia offers a variety of recreational opportunities, from hiking and biking to bird watching and picnicking.
The earliest known human inhabitants of the Wissahickon Valley were the Lenape, the Native American people who once inhabited the entire Delaware Valley.
The Lenape had a reverence for the plants and animals around them. Their simple stone and wood tools did minimal harm to the land, although they did use fire to clear spaces for gardens and to form meadows to attract wildlife.
In contrast, European settlers who arrived in the 17th century and their descendants felled whole forests in the valley with their metal tools and draft animals such as horses and oxen. They engaged in large-scale agriculture, dammed the Wissahickon Creek and its tributaries, erected water-powered mills and built roads in and around the valley.
In 1868, land along the Wissahickon Creek Valley within city limits became part of Philadelphia’s larger Fairmount Park System. In the process of creating and improving the park, the park commission gradually demolished the mills in the valley in an effort to restore a more natural appearance.
In the early 1900s, residents of northwest Philadelphia signed petitions and held an equestrian demonstration to oppose motor vehicles in the valley. They helped convince the Fairmount Park Commission to ban cars and change the name of the creek side road to Forbidden Drive. More than a century later, cars are still banned from the Wissahickon Valley Park.
Spanning 2,000 acres with more than 50 miles of trails, Wissahickon Valley Park in northwest Philadelphia offers a variety of recreational opportunities, from hiking and biking to bird watching and picnicking.
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