Pre-Euro-American and early-Euro-American periods The area around Cresheim Creek was originally inhabited by the
Lenape. Seventeenth-century (1600s) settlers of the
German Township named the creek after the village from which they had emigrated (which is now part of
Monsheim, Alzey-Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate). The aforementioned pergola plaque gives the settlers' spelling of the name as
Krisheim. The settlers arrived in the 1680s. In 1700, they built Cresheim Cottage, the earliest permanent building in the vicinity, which is still standing at the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Gowen Avenue. (The original cottage comprises the smaller part of the present building; the larger part was built circa 1748.)
Cresheim Branch (Fort Washington Branch) of the Connecting Railway From 1893 to 1978, a branch of the
Connecting Railway, variously called either the Cresheim Branch or the Fort Washington Branch of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, diverged from the Chestnut Hill Branch (present-day
Chestnut Hill West Line) just north of
Allen Lane station (behind what is now the campus of New Covenant Church and several schools) and ran next to the creek's bank from there to the creek's headwaters near East Lane station in Wyndmoor. The railbed curved through Hillcrest and Laverock in
Cheltenham Township to meet and follow the right-of-way that is now occupied by the Fort Washington Expressway portion of
Route 309 to Fort Hill, at a station named
White Marsh (
sic), near Fort Washington, where it connected with the
Trenton Cutoff. The branch was
electrified by the Pennsylvania from 1924 to 1952, more as an operational convenience for the railroad than for the line's negligible commuter traffic which the PRR never bothered to develop. The section of the branch below Queen Street in Wyndmoor remained in service for freight customers until 1978 when it was abandoned and the tracks removed. Outdoor enthusiasts of Northwest Philadelphia and various Montgomery County communities have encouraged their local legislators to effect the conversion of the Cresheim Branch's railbed into a
rail trail. ==See also==