THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER

IN GEOLOGICAL TIME

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Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river
was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.
                from the book A River Runs through It, by Norman Maclean

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Look at a map of the Matthias Baldwin Park area that shows both the Schuylkill and
Delaware Rivers. Notice the narrow distance between the two rivers where the Schuylkill
bends in toward the Delaware. Long before the dam was built near the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, a canal was planned to run through the Callowhill Cut, linking the two
rivers. Nothing came of this plan and the Schuylkill continues its southward flow where it
runs into the Delaware River near League Island. Together the two rivers, now one,
empty into the Atlantic Ocean. The Schuylkill River is the largest tributary of the
Delaware.

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I had a theory. Is it possible that 400 million years ago in the Paleozoic Era the Delaware
River was torn apart by a tectonic event? The tectonic plates slipped and warped; the
earth quaked; the Appalachian Mountains pushed up through the earth's crust; the
magma flowed and water wrenched from the Delaware became the Schuylkill, one river
torn apart into two. The last vestige of the waterway that linked the two rivers together
could be Pegg's Run, a creek submerged into a sewer pipe under Willow Street in the east
Callowhill industrial district. I turned to an expert, Eric Clausen, a geology teacher at OLLI in
Philadelphia, for a response. His answer was a firm no: did not happen. Wrong theory.

Clausen, who holds a PhD in geology from the University of Wyoming and capped his
long teaching career at Minot State University, North Dakota, with the title Professor
Emeritus, agreed that the flow and routes of rivers were altered by tectonic and seismic
events as well as glacial ice. The Rhine River in Switzerland is one example. At one time
it flowed into the English Channel rather than into the Atlantic Ocean near Rotterdam,
The Netherlands, as it does today. Locally, the Delaware River, Lehigh River, and
Susquehanna have all made sharp directional changes that are due to such events.

According to Dr. Clausen, "Wind Gaps provide evidence of places where rivers once flowed but were
diverted to flow in different directions. The classic example is Wind Gap, Pennsylvania,
21 miles north of Allentown. There are numerous other wind gaps throughout the
Appalachian Mountain region indicating that prior to today's river pattern, regional rivers
flowed along very different routes."

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With tectonic activity, two plates collide with one plate going over or under the other.
Earthquakes may or may not be a part of tectonic movement, but tectonic activity can change the drainage routes of rivers. Water flowing downhill may change course and flow along a different gradient.
Glacial ice can block the flow of water sending a river on a different path. The quick
melting of huge ice sheets can cause massive floods sending water across upland areas.
This last situation is what Dr. Clausen proposes happened with the creation of the
Schuylkill River.

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The origin of the Schuylkill River lies in the Appalachian Mountains. Geologists in the
late 19th century dated the Schuylkill back to the late Paleozoic Era. This assertion,
repeated over and over again without further research, has recently been challenged. The
current belief is that the Schuylkill is a much younger river than thought. It was created
by a massive glacial melt of the continental ice sheet before the last ice age. Melting
glacial flood waters flowed across New Jersey into the Philadelphia area.

What about earthquakes? The bedrock in many Philadelphia areas, notably Chestnut Hill
is Wissahickon Schist. It is a metamorphic rock formed at depths under great pressure in
the roots of an early Paleozoic mountain range. Old and inactive fault lines from millions
of years ago are evident in the Wissahickon Schist. Today a prominent fault line extends
across the Schuylkill Valley in the Conshohocken area to northern Chestnut Hill along
the valley traversed by Bells Mill Road; however, there is no evidence of a fault line in
the past eroding the Schuylkill River valley.

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Dr. Clausen holds to the theory that erosion in the Schuylkill valley was caused by
flooding, not earthquakes. He says, "The low area that connects the Delaware and Schuylkill is a
water eroded landscape." Immense quantities of water flooded our area
where stand the Barnes Museum, Parkway Central Library, the Art Museum and
Matthias Baldwin Park. Clausen states, "The only known geological event capable of
producing such volumes of water would be the rapid melting of a large continental ice
sheet."

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A final imagining was asked of Dr. Clausen: If floods caused by the quick melting of the
continental ice sheet had not occurred between the Delaware and Schuylkill River, what
would this area look like today? Dr. Clausen: "All evidence of the previous landscape
that existed was destroyed by the melting glacial ice sheets. To speculate: if there had
been no melting ice sheets, I believe the Philadelphia region would stand several hundred
feet higher above sea level." Presently, the Naval Yard is 10 feet above sea level,
Matthias Baldwin Park 50 feet above sea level and Chestnut Hill 445 feet above sea level.
"Without the flooding, there would be no Delaware nor Schuylkill Rivers, no Pennypack,
Tacony and Wissahickon Creeks. There would have been an earlier river that no longer
exists." Gosh, I like Philadelphia's terrestrial footprint just as it is. I call it home.