A city worker operating a backhoe on Spruce Street in 2017 expected to find broken concrete and old cast iron. Instead, they found what looked like tree trunks and logs: water mains bored and buried around 1811, decades before the Civil War. The workers nearly tossed the logs in the trash, but a passerby stopped them.
A bike lane detour led to a 200-year-old discovery
The bike lane on the 900 block of Spruce Street was blocked for utility work, and a passerby, Julie Snell, was forced to walk her bike along the sidewalk when something at the excavation site caught her eye. She noticed what looked like a tree stump, but something about it seemed unusual. As an arborist, Snell analyzes tree silhouettes as part of her work. She had also heard from Adam Levine, a historical consultant at the Philadelphia Water Department, about the wooden pipes that served as Philadelphia's first water mains. She located him and emailed him right away. The Philadelphia Water Department credits that email with saving the pipes from being tossed out with other construction debris.
