Hike #1298; Pennsauken to Philadelphia

Hike #1298; Pennsauken to Philadelphia

2/16/20 Pennsauken/Palmyra to Philadelphia with Jillane Becker, Chris "Cupcake" Kroschinski, and Shelly Janes

In Philly

This next trip would be a point to point between Pennsauken and Philadelphia. It was a sort of impromptu trip; Jillane wanted to do an urban hike with a select group.

Abandoned Pennsauken stuff

Some of the criteria was something urban, and we talked about doing something out by Harrisburg one of my days off and something else maybe nearby associated with coal the other day. She wanted Shelly and Cupcake to go, but we couldn’t make it too insanely far or they wouldn’t want to, so we went with the Philly area.
I tried to think of something that would be really great. I know the Philly area really pretty well at this point, and there are still a million and one places I wanted to see around there. I looked for places I wanted to see and ones I knew everyone would like.

Brownfields

I had last done a hike around this section of Philadelphia about a year ago, and we had a really great trip. I had also done a lot of stuff in the NJ side area from the perimeter series a few years back. Those were always really great trips, particularly in this part of the state.
I remembered when we had hiked through the Pennsauken Flea Market, one of the best flea markets I had ever gone through, and figured that would be a perfect thing to incorporate into this one that everyone would like.

Abandoned stuff

A variation of a previous trip into Philly from there would also be good. I had done a route between Pennsauken, Palmyra, and Philly that involved some rail lines and some historic sites, but there were still a lot more things through there I wanted to see.
I figured on starting at the Pennsauken light rail station just below Palmyra and we could go from there. We could do some stuff I knew, but at any time switch it around and go any direction. I planned that we could walk the Ben Franklin Bridge to get the train back.

Palmyra Cove

We wouldn’t be limited by the bridge though; with only the four of us, we could easily Uber out from anywhere and just go off in another direction if we wanted.
I didn’t know how far we would go, but for me, the farther the better.
We headed down in the morning to meet at 9 at the Pennsauken Station. Shelly and Cupcake were already there when we arrived. I had missed a turn off of the highway at Tacony to get across the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, and ended up in a neighborhood.

Old dredge spoils

It ended up being a good thing we went that way, because we went by a small street flea market on the way, which the hike could be rerouted to go through when we got that direction.
It was that much more important when we got to Palmyra and I was disappointed to see that the flea market, which occupied the old drive in movie theater, had closed down. There was a big sign along the highway where the entrance had been. It was too bad because there was so much stuff there I would like to have bought!

Abandoned car on the dredge spoil

We started out walking from the train station out to River Road where we turned left. When I had done the NJ perimeter, we actually walked across the Light Rail bridge.

Pennsauken Creek

That had to be timed just right for trains, and so we didn’t need to be doing that again. It was just a formality of doing he perimeter of the state that time.
This time, we just headed up over the Pennsauken Creek by way of the New River Road bridge. The old River Road breaks off and is just a bit north of the current bridge, and would have had a much lower crossing of the creek. We continued over and turned to the left on Rt 73 around the cloverleaf. There was a bunch of drug paraphernalia laying in the road going down.

Viewing platform at Palmyra Cove

We headed down hill and passed beneath the light rail line which follows the historic route of the Camden and Amboy Railroad the first regular locomotive driven passenger railroad in America dating back to the 1830s.
Just after that, there was an open field to the left that looked recently chewed up. I think there was something there when I last walked through this section, but I don’t remember what it was. Just after that point, there is an entrance to some sort of old industrial site to the left. We turned here.

Palmyra Cove

The last time I went through here, this was where I went to cut into the back of the flea market property. With the flea market gone, it changed where exactly I wanted to walk through the place. There was no sense in cutting over in that direction.
The industrial area had some sort of old elevators and such in it, such as the ones you’d see on farms or in quarries, but there does not appear to be any minerals in this area at all. As we walked in, there is an abandoned trailer on the left side, which I’d gone in before.

Palmyra Cove

Cupcake and Jillane stayed outside, which surprised me. Shelly of course went in. She always used to go into whatever little weird place we found on the hikes. So it was like old times.

Former dredge spoil

This trailer was just loaded with all sorts of stuff. I rooted through and didn’t find much of any value save for a few good markers and some new never used note pads. I decided to grab a bunch of those and threw them into my pack.
This place has been abandoned there for at least a decade, probably much more.
The building was also full of old style propane tanks. The handles of them were “star top”, which have not been used on tanks under forty pants since at least 2003, probably earlier, so we have an idea when it was used.

Palmyra Cove

We rooted through some more junk, and then headed out into the big clearing ahead. I really don’t know what this area was used for. It could be some sort of a dump I suppose.

View to Betsy Ross and Delair bridges

The area just beyond this is the Palmyra Cove Nature Park, a 250 acre property that occupies a former dredge spoil.
Dredge spoils were among the more interesting things I encountered unexpectedly on the perimeter series. It’s a bit of everyday life in the lower Delaware River region, but something we are not used to seeing, or if we do we are past it before ever considering it. Walking dredge spoils became a major part of the perimeter of NJ hike series. Usually off limits, many were open to public if they were “bird watching” or “wildlife viewing”, which is of course part of what we do.

Palmyra Cove Nature Park

My understanding of dredge spoils is that they started to use them around the 1930s. In order to keep the Delaware River navigable, they had to dredge the silt off the bottom from Cape May up to the end of the tidal section in Trenton.

Palmyra Cove Nature Park

There were dredge spoils along the hikes we were doing from Burlington south to Killkohook, near Fort Mott. Some of them were still very actively being used; ships still regularly use the Delaware River and as such the dredged material must be stored somewhere.

Betsy Ross and Delair Bridges

A dredge spoil really just looks like a retention pond, with a berm close to the riverside, and then a large area where the material is dumped. There has often been infrastructure in place that would somehow serve to place the material in the spoil, but I’ve not seen it done.

In Palmyra Cove Nature Park

I understand some of these dredge spoils have been abandoned since the 1930s. Many of them have large trees growing through them. I’m not sure when the dredge spoil operation ended at Palmyra Cove, but it had to have been a while back judging by the size of the trees. It was used as a leaf dump facility until 1999, which could be what the disturbed area still is I suppose. Now, the park has nine miles of trails through it and is a great bird habitat. I think it’s owned by the Burlington County Bridge Commission.

Along the Delaware

We wandered along the top of the hill, then down the other side toward the southwest end of the former dredge spoils. There was some more of the derelict equipment at the far end of the open spot.
We followed an informal path down onto the edge of the former dredge spoil, and then I saw two guys walking out of the woods that I thought I recognized, but when they saw me they turned to the left and started heading away from us to the opening. We continued out on the berm and stepped over occasional logs and such to follow between the spoil area and the Pennsauken Creek.

View toward Betsy Ross and Delair bridges

There was an old car sitting in the middle of the berm area as we walked, which looked like it might be a 1960s model overturned Mustang. That’s probably around the time I think the dredge spoil was taken out of use.
The Pennsauken Creek was quite pretty through this section. Another guy could be seen walking just ahead, which meant we were getting close to the park area. We reached an area with lots of wooden benches and a small fire pit. The trail was still vague from here, but soon became very obvious.

View to Frankford Arsenal

The trail moved on along the now more open shore of the creek, and there was a nice pier out to the right. This led to a very nice viewing area of the wide open former dredge spoil itself. To the left, there were good views down the Pennsauken Creek to its confluence with the Delaware River. The trail was soon improved with wooden decking and bridges and such. Tidal surge had placed all sorts of debris on sections of it, but none was washed out at all. There was then a long boardwalk over a wetland of phragmites.

At Palmyra Cove Nature Park

The trail reached the point of confluence and then turned to the right. There was an opening where the dredge spoil connected to the river, and it was spanned by a long foot bridge.

View to Tacony Palmyra Bridge

Back down the Delaware, we had very un-obscured views of the Betsy Ross Bridge and the Delair Bridge just beyond it. There was a slow moving train on the Delair Bridge moving along, and the low pitched hum of it over the structure was very audible.
The 1,943 foot long Delair Bridge, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1896, was the first bridge ever to connect the City of Philadelphia with New Jersey. It consisted of three Pennsylvania Truss spans and one through truss swinging span.

Cool root system along the Delaware

The swinging span was replaced by a lift span to accommodate larger boat traffic beneath in 1958.
I told everyone about the bridge, and Cupcake had his brother sending him photos of it because he used to work for the railroad.
Today, the bridge serves both freight traffic as well as the NJ Transit Atlantic City line on the former Pennsylvania Railroad Delair Branch. I really wish I could get away with walking across that one, because it’s so cool. It’s I think two feet short of being the longest lift span in the world.

Tacony Palmyra Bridge

Directly in front of the Delair Bridge is the Betsy Ross Bridge, which opened in 1976. It was the first automobile bridge ever to be named for a woman.

Delaware Basin map

The bridge was actually finished in 1974, but towns fought over the on ramps and such to a great degree which kept it closed for nearly two years.
As we headed north, we could turn off of the trail along the old dredge spoil berm and follow the edge of the river because it was low tide. As long as we walked right about at the water break, it was solid enough to make for a pleasant walk. We did come back up to the trail at one point when the sand got soft, and then headed back down to it again when we started getting good views of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge ahead.
I pointed out across the river where we could see the old Frankford Arsenal, which dates back to 1816. There was a time when this was the sole provider of munitions for the US Armed Forces. It was also the place where the fisrst machine gun, the Gatlin Gun, was tested.
At one time, the place employed over 22,000 people. It was literally a city within a city with its own motor pool, fire department, dining halls, hospital, and police force. The facility remained in service until closure in 1977.

Tacony Palmyra Bridge

There were a lot of people in the nature center, but most of them were sticking to the wider paths just a bit inland. Some pretty large groups, with spotting scopes and such. Audobon Society people are big into this preserve. A great birding location.
The Tacony-Palmyra Bridge came into view ahead, and I cannot look at the thing any more without seeing a giant taco, because Dan Lurie had made a photoshop thing with one of my pictures of it, replacing the center section arch with an enormous Taco.

TACOny Palmyra Bridge

The bridge was completed in 1929, and replaced an earlier ferry service at the same site that had started in 1922. The 3,659 foot long combination tied arch and double leaf bascule bridge was designed by Ralph Modjeski, and in my opinion is among more interesting southern Delaware River crossings.

Tacony Palmyra Bridge

We headed inland when we reached the Nature Center building, and walked up onto the deck facing the river side. The back doors were locked, but the front ones were open.

Philly view

We used the restrooms and looked around at the stuff on exhibit. The two ladies working the desk barely said hello or asked us anything about the place. They were busy in the middle of a conversation about Matthew McConaughey, and I wanted to walk by saying “alright alright alright alright”, but held my tongue.
I ended up spending some time looking at an interesting three dimensional map of the Delaware River basin, which I thought might have been slightly incorrect because of some of the Basha Kill in NY missing.

Carnegie Steel

It’s always amazing to see how these watersheds work, and how close they come to the other larger rivers such as the Susquehanna and the Hudson.
We made our way out of the visitor center and toward the walkway onto the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.
I had crossed the bridge several times before, but it was always on the upstream side of the bridge. This time, there was a painting project going on, and so we were able to walk the downstream side, which provides views back towards the Betsy Ross and Delair Bridges, and the entire Philadelphia city skyline. I was happy to finally have the opportunity to walk this side.
The NJ side of the bridge had recently been painted with a very thick enamel, but Cupcake pointed out that we could still read the name “Carnegie” on the pieces from 1929.
The entire central arch section was covered over its top with something so that painting could begin on that. The paint on the bridge here was badly chipped, so it needed it.
There were little spots that jutted out on the bridge for better vistas, and some sort of weather vane or something or other that usually wouldn’t be accessible to public.

The bridge

Across the bridge on the Pennsylvania side, we could see the timbers from what would certainly have been the ferry landing. The timbers were set up in such a way that it would usher boats into position on that side.
There were two ferry that ran across here, the Tacony and the Palmyra, which ran from 6 am to midnight, seven days a week, until the bridge was completed.
We continued across the bridge with great views toward Philadelphia, and then climbed steeply down the slope on the PA side in the grass. We walked directly toward the waterfront to a location known as Lardner’s Point, where the ferry used to be.
On the PA side, the former Kensington and Tacony Railroad is now a rail trail, which extends from a point just barely upstream from the bridge down to the former Frankford Arsenal area.
The railroad was built between 1886 through 1891 connecting up through the Delaware Avenue waterfronts of Philadelphia to serve all of the industries. I believe it was all controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Bridge view

I walked out onto a dock looking back at the bridge and ferry site, and then we followed a crushed stone path that followed along the waterfront parallel with the old railroad grade. It took us out to an old concrete pier where there were some guys fishing. I had seen a cat colony out here the last time I was out, so I wanted to show everyone where it was. We turned right at the pier slightly inland, and there were tons of shelters out through the woods, some of them with cats perched on top of them. None were friendly enough to approach us though.

Tacony Palmyra Bridge

We headed back the way we came, and then turned to the left to head back out to the ol Kensington and Tacony Railroad bed. The overhead caternaries were still in place along it.

Philadelphia view

This branch of the railroad was abandond in the 1980s some time. Now, it is totally paved and has quite a lot of impressive historic markers along the way.

Ferry landing at Tacony Palmyra Bridge

There was a lot of old pier stuff off to the left, and then a section of rocky beach off to the left.

Wissinoming area view

The area we were now in was called Wissinoming.
The first regular resident of Wissinoming was a Swedish farmer named Peter Cock in 1675. As time went by, workers from the industrial areas of Kensington and Fishtown moved on up the river to the then quiet and pleasant shores of the Delaware.
By the 1880s, there were already sixty nine homes in the Wissinoming section. In 1884, the Wissinoming Mutual Land and Improvement Association was founded to build more houses.

On the bridge

By 1909, there were 900 homes, seventy new businesses and four churches. The waterfront turned into quite a bustling industrial area and things like the canoe club and such started to disappear.
Among the people who once called this area their home was Matthias Baldwin, of Baldwin Locomotive fame. He built his mansion in the 1850s on the foundation of an earlier farm house along the waterfront.
The others walked down to the shore of the Delaware to look around for stuff and I wandered ahead a little bit looking at some other foundations and such. They called me down to have a look at everything, and there were some old mill wheels laying about in the sands.
This would have probably been stuff left over rom the Disston Saw Works and the Tacony Iron and Metal Company, which operated at this point of Philadelphia around 1917, when the city was considered the “workshop of the world”. We headed back up to the trail from there, and passed by some vacant building ruin that looked blow out at the top. That was probably some of the aforementioned industry.

On the bridge

We continued on the railroad bed until we reached the end of County Street. There, we turned right to head out to the flea market we had seen earlier, known as the Quaker City Flea Market.
Vendors were right out to the edge of the street as we approached. There were both indoors and outdoors sections of the place.
Iwas hungry, and there was a food truck outside where we first arrived. I decided to take the opportunity to get something, because we might not pass anything for a bit.

Tacony Palmyra Bridge

They had a lot of stuff, but I was craving a breakfast sandwich. It was getting closer to noon, but a ham, egg, and cheese was sounding just too good, so I ordered one.

Bridge and old ferry landing

When my sandwich arrived, I was surprised to see it served in a long roll. It was not quite a sub roll, but it was also bigger than a hot dog roll. Egg and ham were rolled up in it.

Circa 1924 image of Tacony Palmyra ferry

The thing was absolutely delicious. I was so glad I’d gotten it. I also got a juice to mix a little vodka I’d had left in my backpack from weeks before.

The bridge and ferry landing

We walked inside the building from there, which was just overwhelming with stuff. We turned right inside and walked a long circuit through it. It was hard to go through stuff in there, because it was like so many other indoor flea market spaces that are sort of permanent settings. A bit more crammed. We then came upon a food concession inside that offered three hot dogs for five dollars. Although I was happy with my atypical breakfast sandwich, I found myself wanting more and was ready to order some hot dogs.

One of many historic markers

Just as I was saying something about it, and we were getting ready to exit the building, a skinny black man holding three hot dogs said “I can’t eat all this, you can have one!”

Delaware River

I enthusiastically accepted his offer and scarfed it down probably at an alarming rate.
They had some Super Nintendos for sale, and if they had had the new smaller emulators I might have gotten one. I missed out on that when I saw them at the old Palmyra one over a year before.
We went around the entire place looking at stuff, and I’m not sure who might have gotten what, but I found a guy selling some shoes for five dollars a pair.

Kensington and Tacony Railroad bed

I had just destroyed one of my shoes on their maiden voyage of my hikes just the day before, and so I figured I could just replace them immediately. It’s not often I’ll find a good pair for only five bucks anywhere except maybe Family Thrift, and they hadn’t been as great the last few times I visited there, so I decided to get a pair. The first one I found I could not find a match for, but then I found a brown pair of Sketchers that I might have liked better than the initial ones I found anyway. They just barely fit into my pack.

Bridge view

It was a pair of Sketchers that lasted me longer than probably most any shoes I’ve ever had for hikes, which I’d gotten at the Bargain Outlet in Washington many years ago. I still had them, though in rough shape, right on up till he fire in 2010 (and I saw the guy who sold them to me for the first time in over fifeen years just a year ago at the Palmyra flea market). We stopped at one more food concession place on the north side where Jillane got herself a sandwich for lunch, and we continued from there to the west.

Kensington and Tacony Railroad bed

I was nearly tempted to buy an entire container of World Wrestling Entertainment figures I had seen on the way out, just because it would be funny to give to Susan Duncan. Years ago, I had a happy bag (a bag of junk I often pass to friends to either repackage and give to someone else or to get rid of in a funny way), and she took a load of wrestling figurines I’d gotten from DJ Ray Cordts and left them on everyone’s desks at her Princeton office. She now refers to them as the “Happy Men”, and everyone carried them around in their pockets or posed them on things for over a decade.

Happy Men

We didn’t continue back to the railroad bed, because the trail section ends just to the south anyway. Instead, we followed Tacony Street past a strip club and parallel with I-95/Delaware Expressway.
Soon, we were passing by the old Farnkford Arsenal, which had a really cool castle tower turret along the road to the left.
Many of the old buildings are now long gone, but some of the main area is now home to the Maritime Academy and Franklin Towne Charter High School.

Old grinding wheels along the Delaware

We could see some of the very military looking buildings, and then some of the housing that reminds me much of the government housing buildings out on Sandy Hook in NJ.

Along the Delaware

We continued to the far end of the arsenal site, and then turned to the left on Bridge Street, which paralleled more of the walls of the old arsenal.

Frankford Turret

Toward the end of the arsenal, we crossed over the Frankford Creek, which was quite pretty with the bright sun shinging on it.
The creek was actually very flood prone during the early days of the arsenal, and so they started a project of straightening it in 1909 eventually to take its current course.
Once on the other side, we turned right on Almond Street into a small neighborhood. These streets were narrower than what we’d seen before. We passed a fenced area and then turned right on Pratt Street. It changed names to Belgrade Street at a ninety degree bend, and we followed it through a neighborhood out to an open field park that I wanted to walk through, but it had a fence blocking it in.
We had to turn left on Ash Street briefly and then right on another branch of Almond Street. We then followed this for many blocks to the west. Cupcake and I were chatting and got a bit ahead of Shelly and Jillane.

Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery

I figured we just didn’t see them because of the cars and we were only going slightly further down this road to a cemetery where I wanted to cut to the south.

Cemetery gate house

The Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery spans the length of six full city blocks north to south, and I wanted to walk through the length of that, so Cupcake and I waited there for Shelly and Jillane to show up.
After a long while and they weren’t there, we got a hold of them, and they had turned left down through the town rather than go straight.
We figured we would meet them then at the south end of the cemetery. It extends two more blocks north of where we reached it to Interstate 95, but we turned right to follow the rest of it to the south.

Historic image

The cemetery was established in 1887, and the entrance gate and caretaker's house designed by architect John J. Deery was built about 1888.

Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery gate house

The gate house still remains the office for the cemetery to this day, although it ceased being a caretaker’s house in 1970.
The beautiful piece of architecture used to have a large statue of Jesus over the very center of it, but it disappeared sometime around World War I. It is believed that it was taken for scrap due to the value of the metal at that time.
Jillane and Shelly met us at the entrance, and we decided to take a block side trip to a Wawa around the corner. I was still thinking about the hot dogs from back at the flea market, so I decided to get another one at the Wawa.

Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery gate house

Wawa had no public restroom, and so we continued down Bristol Street to the south from Richmond Street. We turned right on Bath Street from there.

Old track crossing and Betsy Ross Bridge

We made the next left on Hedley Street, which went down to the inactive railroad tracks facing the Betsy Ross Bridge. It looked like there was a fence blocking it off so we could not get through toward the waterfront. Iplanned to just turn right and follow the tracks, but there was a police officer parked at the very end.
I figured we might have to just go another way when we got down there, because it didn’t look as though there was a way to go, but before we reached him, the cop pulled out and headed away from us.

Railroad

There was actually a pedestrian gate in the fence, but we didn’t use it. We just turned right to follow the tracks.
There were phragmites growing through a lot of it, and I am told the track is pretty much “mothballed” though not officially abandoned.
We passed beneath the Betsy Ross Bridge on the tracks, and there was a service road beneath it that went over the tracks. Just as I was approaching, the same cop that had pulled out and headed north crossed the tracks right in front of me.

Richmond Generating Station

He didn’t stop and talk to us at all. I figure he might have just wanted to see where we were going and what we were doing. We didn’t see him again after that.

Old rail spur

Just after that, we crossed the rail bridge over the Frankford Creek.
Now, we crossed over the Frankford Creek earlier, but what it appears had been done was to both straighten and reroute the flow into two routes. One of them probably served as a water power thing for the arsenal, while this one was now the main flow of the creek. Both branches reach the Delaware different ways. I had originally considered staying on the tracks to the west of here, but instead we made the first left on Lewis Street.

Old rail spur

This led us out to Delaware Ave directly across from the now abandoned Richmond Generating Station.
Richmond Generating Station was designed by John T. Windrim and opened 1925 to serve Philadelphia's growing need for power. The facility once housed the world's largest Westinghouse turbogenerator.
Today, it remains closed with questionable future, although the site does still appear to have a good degree of security. A lot of people I know have been through the place.

Old rail spur

We could see where the old rail bed with the caternaries comes in from the left, and there are still some rails around the facility.

Rail trail

Along Delaware Ave beyond, the railroad is now a paved trail, or the paved trail is right next to it. We could sometimes see the tracks parallel with us in the fenced industrial areas to the left.
Often, there were old spurs still visible in the streets and into the other businesses.
We continued along the trail along Delaware Avenue for a while. When we got to the sharp turn where the road turns insland, General Pulaski Park reaches out onto a pier into the Delaware River.

Old Reading Railroad car float from General Pulaski Park

Directly across from General Pulaski Park was the pier for the old Reading Railroad Car Float operation. Rail cars would be loaded and floated across the Delaware from here.

End of some tracks

The destination was the Bulson Street Reading Railroad yard in Camden. They would then travel by rails to Beesley’s Point.
The Reading Railroad operated the car float until 1962 when they acquired trackage rights over the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Delair Bridge.
I wanted to reach General Pulaski Park because when I had visited there before, I was swarmed by feral cats that all became very friendly in a short period of time. There are cat houses and a fenced in area to keep them safe there.

Tower along the rail bed

Unfortunately, there was some yahoo wasting gas riding a dirt bike out one end of the General Pulaski Park pier and back, back and forth, the entire time we were there. I could tell by how the cats had their ears back that they were too threatened by the sound of the bikes to take any chances on us. Some sat on top of their house areas. A few of them were quite big, so we could tell they were pretty well fed.
I wished it had been like the last time, where they all just came out like crazy and were enjoying being pet. But, on that occasion, we heard two gun shots and they all took off and hid impressively fast.
The last time I had walked through there, we walked all the way out into Port Richmond. It was a long walk around and not all that incredibly interesting that I would want to do it again. It didn’t get interesting until where we reached the Reading Railroad approach to the piers.

Rails still visible

The railroad tracks we had been walking before continued to the left through an industrial site, which we didn’t think we could get away with walking through the previous time. I looked it over this time, and with only the four of us, decided we should try to walk it.
We walked along the tracks, and then an ungated road behind Riverside Materials to head west more.
Soon, the old Reading Railroad piers were appearing off to the right, now all wooded and barely recognizable. Tracks came to an end, and there was an old, high tower along them. We crossed over some old tracks bound for some of the old piers.
My goal was to reach the famous old Reading pier known as Graffiti Pier today. I wanted to at least get to that point before dark, and then cover a bit of Beach Street into town again. I had one historic photo on that street I wanted to get a “now” shot of.

Old Reading piers

Rather than bother with all of the piers, despite the fact that there were holes through the fences people clearly use for fishing access, I decided we would wait to head out to the best piers.
A path separated from the one track remaining off to the right, that headed a bit away from the waterfront. We kept on a path to the left, and soon crossed two mostly buried sets of tracks. Just after that, we emerged onto a large open area that was once an expansive railroad yard. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, which was established in Philadelphia way back in 1833, was known to be America’s very first conglomerate.

Port Richmond Piers

The not only owned the trackage, and were the first railroad ever to double track their main line, they owned both the anthracite coal mines as well as Port Richmond, at the piers we were walking through. By 1876, Port Richmond encompassed 21 wharfs totaling 15,000 feet and could accommodate 250 vessels. When Interstate 95 was constructed, this site was mostly severed, and the demand for coal had dwindled.
Today, the once bustling piers remain abandoned, and the famous graffiti pier was the anthracite dump to the barges on the Delaware.

Port Richmond Piers

At the opening to the yard, there was another path that went off to the left. We followed it, and turned hard left over to the waterfront and a large concrete pier.

Historic image of the Graffiti Pier

We walked out onto that briefly, but then cut to the right on an abandoned concrete road that followed along the edges of the piers. The next one from the concrete one had a wooden framework that was badly rotting.

Port Richmond Piers

These piers went through many different incarnations from their start as wooden structures to poured concrete of the early 1900s.

Abandoned

The Graffiti Pier was soon straight ahead, and there were people climbing all over the top of it, and through the large walkways underneath.

Port Richmond Piers

Each wall and concrete supports under the structure were adorned with all sorts of graffiti. We saw some guys painting some stuff when we arrived down there.

Port Richmond Piers

It was actually kind of cool. No one was being threatening in any way, except at one point when we walked on through to an opening in the center, where it got bright.

Port Richmond Piers

A guy peaked around the corner and started walking around the left side behind the piers while I walked ahead. He looked suspicious so I went back to get Jillane behind me just in case. Other than that, no one seemed to be acting at all odd.

Bridge view from the pier at sunset

We all headed on through the pier to the very end on the Delaware, which had the most amazing views of the sun setting over the Delaware, and the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Under the pier

We hung out here for a little bit of time, just because it’s such a good spot.
Soon, we headed back, this time along the west side of the pier. There seemed to be even more people showing up as we moved on. There was a fence with a hole through it at the far end, and all of Beach Street was line with cars of people parking to visit the pier.
The site was officially closed off, and my understanding was that it still is, but according to one guy out there on the pier, they are now sort of ignoring it to some extent. Eventually the city wants to incorporate the popular pier into some sort of waterfront park, but how exactly to handle it is tough to figure out. Security at that site would not be easy at all.
We turned left onto Beach Street, and there was a lot of new construction going on to the left. The last time I had been out there, we were able to walk out to the ends of more of the piers with no problems, but now there were some pretty serious chain link fences and construction vehicles out there.

Pier view

Something big is definitely happening.
We remained on Beach Street out to Richmond Street, and then could turn back to the left to continue on Beach Street further.
I had done one then and now shot of this section last time I was there, but I had one more historic shot of a train coming right down the road of the Philadelphia belt way track. We could see the paver streets below the asphalt, with the rails still at times protruding through as we walked, but trying to figure out where exactly this shot was proved difficult.

Pier view

I think I managed to find the right spot as we walked, and I felt relieved to have gotten it before dark.

We moved just a bit ahead, and passed by the Delaware Generating Station, which was built in 1917 and abandoned in 2004. This one might have a bit more of a future than the Richmond station further to the south. Last time I was here, a local told me that there was a plan to turn it into some sort of an event venue (although he was not into it because he said the area could not handle the parking necessary to have that). I think it might work out, considering the fact that there’s a casino right across from it a little further along the waterfront path.

Delaware Generating Station

As we walked by the gated entrance to the plant, I could see the old rails from the same line that went up Beach Street that accessed it.

Beach St

The gate opened and a security guard left, and another guard was inside. The guy was probably in his twenties, and I stood outside of the open gate waiting for the others to catch up while he watched me cautiously. I was going to ask him if I could come in and take a photo of the rails there.
I asked the guy first if there was anything new in the plans with regard to the event venue, and pointed out to the others how it needed work, since the re-bar was exposed in the concrete walls.
The guy went onto some dramatic thing about how he’d just gotten into a situation with his co worker who just left, and that he wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

Graffiti Pier

I just found it humorous and didn’t bother to ask if I could take a photo of the rails.
We next turned to the left into Penn Treaty Park, where there are great views of the old plant. It’s a beautiful park right along the Delaware, and a very historic site.

Scene in Penn Treaty Park

The area is known as the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, but was historically the Lenape village of Shackamaxon. It was here that in 1683 William Penn entered into the treaty of peace with the local Lenape Chief Tamanend under an Elm tree.

Delaware Generating Station

The treaty between Penn’s people and the Lenape lasted over a century until the Penn’s Creek Massacre
The Elm tree fell in a storm in 1810, and a monument was erected to it. Even then, it was recognized for its significance, and the tree’s offspring were grown and replanted. The site became a lumber yard, and eventually it became a public park commemorating the treaty in 1898. In 2010, a descendant of the original Elm was planted here.

Ben Franklin Bridge view

We headed to the waterfront and got some more good views of the old power plant before continuing on the paved path downstream along the Delaware.

Graffit Pier

The tide was coming in, and we could see the water moving up. A police car pulled up in front of the park and made an indiscernible announcement, which I think was about the closing of the park at dusk, so we moved on out downstream, and walked the well-lit pathway along the casino property.
There were outstanding views of the Ben Franklin Bridge and waterfront through this section.
After the casino, we continued out to a parking lot and skirted the edge as far as we could before having to make our way back out to Delaware Avenue. I found an old security camera bubble laying on the ground and wore it as a hat for a while.
We ended up in a fenced parking lot and had to go around, so we climbed onto the roof of a small building thing and hopped down over the fence to a path that went back out to the street. I dropped my security camera hat on the ground and broke it getting down, so I left it sitting on top of a fence post there.

Graffiti Pier

We walked Delaware Ave just a bit more to the south, and then turned to the right when we got to Spring Garden Street. We walked up and under Interstate 95, which has the Spring Garden Station of SEPTA right under it and some nice murals and such on the walls. We probably could have hopped the train from there to the PATCO Speed line and exchanged over to the Light Rail station, but we wanted to get some food.
We decided to get some Mexican, because we wouldn’t have as much trouble finding Shelly something gluten free there, and headed north several blocks toward Cantina Dos Segundos I think it was. There was a thin old black man singing on our way there.
When we went in, they had a half an hour wait for seating, and we decided to go for it. We sat outside, and the singer came over and started singing to us.

He said he was a Vietnam Veteran, and that he had been living on the streets for well over twenty years. He said that he gets some help from the VA, but that he just needed something to get a bite to eat.

Graffiti Pier

Shelly still had the chocolate she had picked up at the flea market, and I threw one of those for him into his cup. He talked to us a bit more, and showed us his neck, which had these strange welts on it. He told us that was what the Agent Orange had done to him.

We talked to him a bit more, and he went on to say it’s worse than that as well. He kneeled over and lifted his left pant leg to reveal that his entire lower leg was covered with the same.
He said it wasn’t so bad except for the fact that it itches like crazy. Jillane had a container of lotion he could use, and gave him a squirt in his hand to try on it. He said that the VA gives him some stuff that works well, but it wasn’t always available to him.
Before he left, he paused and sang us a thank song you and moved on.

Graffiti Pier

We went back into the restaurant and didn’t have to wait too much more to be seated.
This place was quite excellent. Everything was very well prepared and was among the best Mexican restaurants I’d eaten at. It was the perfect meal to close the night out at.
The place was super crowded and the music was obnoxiously loud to the point that we would not be able to even have a conversation if they had put us at one of their high top tables, but fortunately we were able to get them to give us a quieter one in another room, which was great.

Sunset and the Ben Franklin Bridge

Rather than head back to the stations and have to deal with trains, we opted to Uber out. It wasn’t all that much to get back, and it ended up probably being over an hour shorter than it would have been if we tried to do the train.
We had hit just over fifteen miles for sure, and it was Shelly’s first time doing that much in a long while.
We got back to Pennsauken with no problems, and were on our way. Everyone was discussing how they want to do more hikes that have the criteria of urban, flea markets, and Mexican food.

Ben Franklin Bridge at night

HAM