Cohoquinoque Creek

The Cohoquinoque Creek was formerly a stream running west to east through the Callowhill neighborhood in Philadelphia, along the southern part of Northern Liberties and immediately north of original northern boundary of Philadelphia. This small tributary of the Delaware River 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 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 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, which is about a mile to the north.

At one time, Cohoquinoque Creek was navigable by small boats from the Delaware, and farm products were floated on flat boats 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 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 Cohocksink 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. (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.)

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