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Wingohocking Creek


Wingohocking Creek was once a major tributary of another Philadelphia, Pennsylvania stream, Frankford Creek, which flows into the Delaware River. Frankford Creek was formed by the confluence of Wingohocking Creek and Tacony Creek (sections of which, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, are also called Tookany Creek). Since Wingohocking Creek is now completely obliterated, having been piped underground in the late 19th century, it can be confusing to look at a modern map, which shows Tacony Creek suddenly changing names "in the middle of the stream," so to speak, and becoming Frankford Creek. The point at which the name changes is near the present intersection of I and Ramona Streets, where the Wingohocking once joined the Tacony to form the Frankford Creek. What was once a major stream and the site of many mills and factories has been completely wiped off the map—all but the city's sewer maps, that is. The outlet of the Wingohocking Sewer is the largest in the Philadelphia sewer system, about 24 feet (7.3 m) high. It is visible from various points in the Juniata neighborhood and the adjoining golf course.

The word "Wingohocking" may have originated from the indigenous Lenni Lenape for "favorite land for planting" or, perhaps, "crooked water." By other accounts, the stream was named by James Logan in honor of Chief Wingohocking, with whom he traded names in traditional Native American fashion as a sign of mutual respect.

The stream now flows in a combined sewer (carrying both storm water and raw sewage) under Belfield Avenue and close to the route of Wingohocking Street in the Logan neighborhood of Philadelphia. It had two branches, the larger of which, the West Branch, reached as far as the Mount Airy neighborhood. In the 1860s, when municipal engineers drew up the preliminary drainage maps for Philadelphia's 129 square miles (330 km2), the conversion of many of the city's smaller streams into sewers became an integral part of the plan. The Wingohocking was converted beginning in the 1880s, with the final section of 21 miles (34 km) of streams finally obliterated in 1928.


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