The Cohoquinoque Creek was formerly a stream running west to east through the Callowhill

Callowhill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Callowhill is a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It is roughly located in the vicinity of Callowhill Street, between Vine Street, Spring Garden Street, Broad Street, and 8th Street. It is named for Hannah Callowhill Penn, William Penn's second wife...

 neighborhood in Philadelphia, along the southern part of Northern Liberties

Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

-Boundaries:Northern Liberties is located north of Center City and is bordered by Girard Avenue to the north; Callowhill Street to the south; North 6th Street to the west; and the Delaware River to the east...

 and immediately north of original northern boundary of Philadelphia. This small tributary of the Delaware River

Delaware River

The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States.A Dutch expedition led by Henry Hudson in 1609 first mapped the river. The river was christened the South River in the New Netherland colony that followed, in contrast to the North River, as the Hudson River was then...

 remains today, as a sewer, under Willow Street, which winds its way through what is sometimes called the East Callowhill Industrial District. Its name, spelled various ways (Cohoquenoque, Cohoquonoque, Cohoquinoke), is said to be derived from a Lenni-Lenape

Lenape

The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...

 word for "the grove of long pine trees." This was also the name of a nearby Lenape village.

Accounts vary, but Cohoquinoque Creek arose around the present-day intersection of Fifteenth and Spring Garden Streets (and perhaps as far north as Fairmount Avenue) and was also fed by a well-known spring in the Spring Garden

Spring Garden, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Spring Garden is a neighborhood in the central Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, bordering Center City on the north. Spring Garden is a neighborhood that combines diverse residential neighborhoods and significant cultural attractions...

 district near present-day Ninth Street. The creek was later primarily known as Pegg's Run. Willow Street, a rare curvilinear street in the older part of Philadelphia, is wavy because it follows the course of the old stream. For centuries, Cohoquinoque Creek has often been confused with Cohocksink Creek

Cohocksink Creek

The Cohocksink Creek was formerly a stream running between what are now the Philadelphia neighborhoods of Northern Liberties and Kensington. It was a tributary of the Delaware River. Its name, spelled various ways, is said to come from a Lenape word for "pine lands." Alternate names included...

, which is about a mile to the north.

Early history

At one time, Cohoquinoque Creek was navigable by small boats from the Delaware, and farm products were floated on flat boats using to the Delaware River for sale in Philadelphia. Rowers could even make their way up as far as the famous Spring Garden spring. In the 1780s, a bridge (Poole's or Pool's bridge) was built over the stream at Front Street

Front Street (Philadelphia)

Front Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is a north-south street running parallel to and near the Delaware River. It was constructed when Philadelphia was laid out by William Penn in 1682....

 and citizens were proud of this early structure. The land on both sides was low and swampy, and several people straying from the causeway lost their lives in the mud. There were sluices under the causeway to permit free flowing of water.

The name Pegg’s Run was derived from Daniel Pegg, a Quaker brickmaker who once possessed nearly all of the Northern Liberties south of Cohocksinc Creek. Pegg in 1686 acquired three hundred and fifty acres of marshy ground in that area from one Jurian Hartsfelder, who held a patent on the land dating back years before the arrival of William Penn

William Penn

William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful...

. (The land along the Delaware River that became Philadelphia was under Swedish control from 1638 to 1655, when it passed to Dutch control, and then English control in 1664.)

Industrial use and conversion to sewer

Accounts vary as to when Pegg's Run was covered over and made into a city sewer. One states that the stream was covered as far west as Franklin Street (now removed) by 1811 and to Ninth Street by 1824. Whatever the case, the stream had become tremendously polluted even as early as the late 18th century, with numerous tanneries and other early Philadelphia industries located along its banks. The following accounts indicate how bad the situation was:

A small stream of water, called Pegg's Run, passes through a portion of the Northern Liberties and Spring Garden, which, until a few years ago, was left open and unimproved. The bottom of the stream was miry, and, at low tide and in hot and droughty weather, was often destitute of sufficient water to carry off its contents. Receiving the offals of very many slaughter-houses, lanyards, glue, starch, dressed skin, and soap manufactories adjoining it, as well as the contents of two culverts, of a large number of privies, and of the gutters of the numerous populous streets and alleys it crosses, it became highly offensive, and the source of noxious exhalations. This stream, which plays a conspicuous part in the history of one of the epidemics, and was correctly pronounced the greatest nuisance in Philadelphia, attracted finally the attention of the public and council, and has since been culverted.

--From René La Roche, Yellow Fever, Considered in Its Historical, Pathological, Etiological, and Therapeutical Relations... (Blanchard and Lea, 1855), at 27-28.

...[I]n reference to the development in Duke Street, (then Artillery Lane,) Northern Liberties, he alludes to its proximity to what was called in a petition of that time, "the greatest nuisance in Philadelphia," Pegg's Run, and describes it "as an open culvert or common sewer, passing through the closely built parts of Penn Township, Spring Garden, and the Northern Liberties, to the River Delaware. In its course, it receives the contents of the gutters of the numerous populous streets and alleys it crosses, and two culverts from the city also open into it. Along its borders are situated a number of manufactories of glue, starch, dressed skins, and soap. About fifty slaughter-houses, and the privies of most of the adjoining dwellings, the refuse, fermentable and putrescent matters of which are all emptied into its stream. Except during the heavy rains, or immediately after them, the stream is barely sufficient to carry along, with a sluggish current, the mass of decomposing, offensive substances that compose it, for in fact, it seems more like liquid mud than water."

--From Report of the Philadelphia Relief Committee Appointed to Collect Funds for the Sufferers by Yellow Fever, At Norfolk & Portsmouth, Va., 1855 (Inquirer Printing Office, 1856), at 27-28. (Most of the language within this quote was taken from an article entitled "An Account of the Yellow or Malignant Fever Which Appeared in the City of Philadelphia in the Summer and Autumn of 1820 with Observations on That Disease," by Dr. Samuel Jackson, beginning on page 313 of volume 1 of The Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences (1820), at page 355.)

After the sewer was built, the tanners and other industries along the way obtained entrances into it, and thus continued discharging their wastes into the covered stream and out into the nearby Delaware River.

Willow Street was built on top of the culvert by 1829. Around 1834, tracks were laid on the thoroughfare by the Northern Liberties and Penn Township Railroad. These tracks ran from the Delaware River to Broad Street

Broad Street (Philadelphia)

Broad Street is a major arterial street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is nearly 13 miles long.It is Pennsylvania Route 611 along its entire length with the exception of its northernmost part between Old York Road and Pennsylvania Route 309 and the southernmost part south of Interstate 95...

 and connected to the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad

Main Line of Public Works

The Main Line of Public Works was a railroad and canal system built by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the 19th century. It ran from Philadelphia west through Harrisburg and across the state to Pittsburgh and connected with other divisions of the Pennsylvania Canal...

 tracks on Pennsylvania Avenue. In the 1850s, the entire line became part of the Reading Railroad

Reading Company

The Reading Company , usually called the Reading Railroad, officially the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road and then the Philadelphia and Reading Railway until 1924, operated in southeast Pennsylvania and neighboring states...

.

Modern times

When the East Callowhill Street district was cleared for urban redevelopment in the late 1960s (i.e., the Callowhill East Urban Renewal Area project), the tracks were removed but the sewer remained. This is why Willow Street itself was not removed when the other streets in the district were. The sewer flows into the Delaware River at what was once known as the Willow Street wharf. Today, that vicinity is midpoint between Callowhill and Spring Garden Streets.