The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It flows for from Pottsville to Philadelphia, where it joins the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries.
In 1682, William Penn chose the left bank of the confluence upon which he founded the planned city of Philadelphia on lands purchased from the native Delaware nation. It is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River, and its whole length was once part of the Delaware people's southern territories.
The river's watershed of about lies entirely within the state of Pennsylvania, the upper portions in the Ridge-and-valley Appalachian Mountains where the folding of the mountain ridges metamorphically modified bituminous into widespread anthracite deposits located north of the Blue Mountain barrier ridge.
Millions of tons of anthracite coal from Pennsylvania's Coal Region flowed by waterway and rail into Philadelphia to feed the iron and steel industry.
The source of the Schuylkill's eastern branch is in heavily mined land, one ridgeline south of Tuscarora Lake along a drainage divide with the Little Schuylkill River, about a mile east of the village of Tuscarora and about a mile west of Tamaqua, at Tuscarora Springs in Schuylkill County. Tuscarora Lake is one source of the Little Schuylkill.
The West Branch starts near Minersville and joins the eastern branch at the town of Schuylkill Haven. It then combines with the Little Schuylkill River downstream in the town of Port Clinton. The Tulpehocken Creek joins it at the western edge of Reading. Wissahickon Creek joins it in northwest Philadelphia. Other major tributaries include: Maiden Creek, Manatawny Creek, French Creek, and Perkiomen Creek.
The Schuylkill joins the Delaware at the site of the former Philadelphia Navy Yard, now the Philadelphia Naval Business Center, just northeast of Philadelphia International Airport.
Major towns
Pottsville
Reading
Pottstown
Phoenixville
Norristown
Conshohocken
Lower Merion
Philadelphia
Name
The Leni Lenape (called Delaware Indians by European settlers) are the original inhabitants of the area around this river. It remains unclear whether they historically had a single name for this river. There is evidence that the Lenape called the river (which means "falling/roaring waters"). There is also some belief that the Lenape called the river ("Turtle River") or ("Turtle Place"). There is a tributary named Tulpehocken near Reading.
The first European explorers of the river were from the Netherlands, Sweden, and then England. Historical documents attest various names used by Europeans, including Manayunk, Manajungh, Manaiunk, and Lenni Bikbi. The Swedish explorers called it or alternately , or the Linde River. The (then believed) headwaters of the river, up near Reading, was later called Tulpehocken by the English.
The river was then called the Dutch name (). As means "creek" (e.g. Dordtsche Kil) and (now spelled ) means "to hide, skulk" or "to take refuge, shelter", one explanation given for this name is that it translates to "hidden river", "skulking river" or "sheltered creek" and refers to the river's confluence with the Delaware River at League Island, which was nearly hidden by dense vegetation. This name has traditionally been credited to Arent Corsen (or Arendt Corssen), an agent of the Dutch West India Company who purchased land “on the Schuylkill River” in 1633. Another explanation is that the name properly translates to "hideout creek" in one of the Algonquian languages spoken by a Leni Lenape in their confederation.