Here is an image of the Wissahickon Creek, painted in 1845 by English-born portraitist Thomas Sully. Just a year or two earlier, Edgar Allan Poe wrote these lines about the Wissahickon: "Now the Wissahiccon is of so remarkable a loveliness that, were it flowing in England, it would be the theme of every bard, and the common topic of every tongue, if, indeed, its banks were not parcelled off in lots, at an exorbitant price, as building-sites for the villas of the opulent." Beautiful as the Wissahickon Valley was in the 1840s, however, it was not simply untrammeled wilderness. In fact, by 1845 the creek had been industrialized for over 150 years, beginning with the paper mill built by William Rittenhouse in 1690. By the nineteenth century there were dozens of mills lining the creek. The fact that the Wissahickon would in the future become neither completely industrialized nor simply, as feared by Poe, an enclave for the rich, stands as a testimony to the far-sightedness of the nineteenth-century Philadelphians who saw fit to preserve the Wissahickon as an urban wilderness area.When walking along Forbidden Drive, the road that follows the Wissahickon through Northwest Philadelphia, I am routinely astounded by the Valley's beauty, and I marvel at the contradiction of feeling completely surrounded by wilderness while knowing that I am still in the middle of a densely-populated urban area. I'm naming this blog Forbidden Drive because I would like to explore in writing some aspects of contemporary life in urban America from my vantage point in Northwest Philadelphia. I hope in my entries to use reflection and research to make sense of some of the contradictions made apparent to me in everyday life.
With that said, welcome to my blog!
