Ghost Of Our Pond

This is what we call the "Dog Bowl," the place in Clark Park where people exercise their mutts, or perform a play, or give a concert, or slide on a sled. It is the lowest point in my neighborhood and is about four blocks from my place.

In earlier times there was a pond here, and a mill using the water power of Mill Creek. After the Civil War, everything changed. As Wiki has it,

"A prominent feature of the park is its "bowl", once a mill pond that powered a paper mill and another mill to the south. An ice house sat near its southern tip. The pond was fed by Mill Creek, which ran through a ravine between 42nd and 43rd Streets, was dammed above Woodland Avenue, and emptied into the Schuylkill River.
"The mills were closed in the 1860s. As the area shifted from farmland to residential, over the next decades, the dam was removed, the creek was buried to make it easier to build houses, and the pond dried up."

We local residents all know about the pond and the creek, partly because things are named after them. The location of the old stream is a deep slash through the terrain at 43rd Street.

For these reasons, one hears little quips and asides about the mill and its water when showers fall, and green things smile, and all low places fill with cool spring rain.