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A Brief History of the Wissahickon Valley |
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Page 4 of 6 The development of the Wissahickon Valley as an agricultural community continued after the war without interruption. The steep walls of the Wissahickon Creek as it descended through Chestnut Hill and Germantown prevented consideration of the creek as a transportation route. | |  | But the 1840s brought on the commercial development of rail transportation and the North Penn Railway pushed westward towards New York through the Lehigh Valley with a single track. That railway line was opened as far as present day Gwynedd Valley in July, 1855.of the Wissahickon Valley would soon produce tragedy. The Reading Line began to run excursion trains from Philadelphia allowing patrons to escape the smoke and
grime of central Philadelphia for a day in the country. Since there was only one track, the line had various spurs where a train would park while awaiting the passage of an oncoming train | | On July 17, 1856, just a year after the line was extended to "Wissahickon" signals concerning right of way were garbled and two trains collided head on the track. The outbound train was transporting nearly 1000 parents and children for a church picnic. Fifty-nine passengers were killed and another 100 injured. Upon learning of the accident, a frail widow named Mary Ambler converted her home at the intersection of Main and Tennis Avenues into a hospital and led efforts to care for the injured. Her heroism was memorialized in 1869 by the railroad, which changed the name of its train station and the community growing around it to Ambler. |  | |  | | Although the train collision remains among the most catastrophic in American rail history, the process of expanding rail service continued. For almost 18 months engineers dug a half mile long "gash" in a hill located at Swedesford Road and School House Lane in order to provide rail service to North Wales. Service was completed in late 1856 as workers completed a 500 foot long tunnel which extended 60 feet below the surface. With completion of the railroad the area around Gwynedd Valley became a resort community centering around the Gwynhurst Hotel across from the station. Many prominent Philadelphians established summer homes around Penllyn and Gwynedd. Among those to establish homes in the area were Moncure Robinson, chief engineer of the Reading Railway and William Singerly, owner of the Philadelphia Record whose numerous "Record Farms"(now Normandy Farms) hosted Grover Cleveland in 1894. Earlier, some less prominent people persons also stopped at William Foulke's Penllyn home while traveling on a railroad that had no tracks and featured trains. This railroad carried men and women in bondage on a road to freedom. The railroad also gave birth to the community's first borough. In 1857 North Wales consisted of twelve homes and a distillery. Eleven years and one civil war later North Wales asked to be made a borough based upon its population of 380 persons together with a lumber and coal yard, two hotels, and three general stores.
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