Image courtesy of Rockledge Borough
Learn more about the small community we call home.
Perhaps it will come up in a local game of bar trivia. Maybe you’ve just always wondered. Whatever reason the history of the Borough of Rockledge has brought you here, we’re glad you came. The borough actually maintains a webpage with just such background information on it. But we at Willow Grove Now, wanted to be sure all were aware of the rich and deep past life the place you now call home has!
Let’s start at, well … it’s start! The Borough of Rockledge was “carved out” (geology joke totally intended) from Abington Township, which of course has remained its neighboring municipality along with the City of Philadelphia. With a whopping 0.34 square miles to its name, the borough separation came about as farmland was purchased up by building associations.
As residents started to spill over from Fox Chase, the associations made the purchase of, what at the time was, a few farms along what today is called Huntingdon Pike. The builders opted to divide the farm tracts into housing lots.
According to the borough’s site, maps dating back to 1877 show that Abington and Cheltenham townships previously included the farmland, which were later subdivided out to form the Borough.
Trivia players everywhere in the community should be ready with this next tidbit of knowledge. Rockledge was officially incorporated as a borough on Jan. 9, 1893 and before that, actually had a different name. The initial settlement’s concentrated in what is now Rockledge Borough were called Sylvania.
Sylvania is Latin for “woods or of the woods,” so it isn’t hard to guess at this name’s meaning. Rockledge, however, has been puzzling to some. The soil in our area was once fertile farmland, meaning the rock-to-dirt ratio couldn’t be that excessive.
Thankfully, the borough’s informative history page answers that one, too.
“Rockledge probably acquired its name from the old stone quarry, which was located on the south side of the 200 block of Huntingdon Pike, tapering back toward Lynnwood Road and Jarrett Avenue,” said the page. “This quarry was most active between 1916 and 1920.”
The timelines don’t exactly line up, since the borough incorporated a good 23 years prior to the quarry’s “peak” business, but chances are it was cut out around the same timeframe.
Sadly, by 1925, the same quarry was filled as overflow “junk” from Philadelphia and coal ashes. Sanitation Historian Martin Melosi (Who knew that was a job!?) wrote in his book “Garbage in the Cities” that by 1921, Philadelphia began to embrace what he called a “street cleaning craze,” and adopted a Bureau of Highways and Street Cleaning Department, which was nicknamed White Wings. But that trash had to go somewhere, and, in what seems an unfair deal for the new tiny borough, it got dumped in Rockledge’s quarry.
Overall, that means Rockledge’s land was likely built on a combination of former farmland and city waste. Hm, perhaps this is why this story doesn’t get out too often!? On the plus side, the City of Brotherly Love quit dumping its “coal ash, vegetable waste, and compacted excrement” in the Schuylkill and in Rockledge, forming its own dump. By 1942, city planning commission maps, according to Necessity for Ruins, showed a City Dump near Vine Street, allowing city dwellers to keep their trash to themselves.
Our long, entertaining history doesn’t end there. The small little “borough that could” didn’t give up as concepts of secession from Montgomery County and annexation by Philadelphia gained popularity from 1916 to 1923. In what the borough website describes as “a close local identification with Fox Chase,” the movement was increasing interest level across its entire 0.3 square miles.
Judges refused a petition in the County Court of Quarter Sessions after it was initiated.
“After the Court’s rejection, the movement was abandoned, primarily because the Borough residents had second thoughts about Philadelphia’s higher taxes and the distant location of its high schools,” said the borough’s site.
The community began to form around the tiny borough, building a Rockledge Volunteer Fire Company in 1903. The first firehouse was built on Sylvania Avenue below Huntingdon Pike, according to the borough’s page. All efforts to incorporate Rockledge may have come to an early demise as the fire company was tested before World War I, as the Jarret Avenue Knitting Mill “burned down, briefly threatening the entire borough,” said its site.
In a strange twist of fate, the Rockledge Fire Company’s Facebook Page reported that on Feb. 13 in 1995, the Infanta Knitting Mill Fire, located at 27 Jarrett Ave., also burned. The then-abandoned, three-story hosiery factory had thick brick walls and steel supports, with heavy timber making up its floor and roof. The difficult fire required multiple responding fire companies to put out the blaze in three-and-a-half hours.
While the mill was lost in the 1995 fire, no one was injured, and no homes were lost in the process. Today, an empty lot stands, with thick green grass and tall shade trees lining its borders.
While 1995 is history to some youngsters, let’s dive back a bit further in the borough’s past. Thankfully, the newly built firehouse’s company was able to douse the flames at the knitting mill, ensuring Rockledge could continue to grow.
A Rockledge Elementary School building was erected even before that, with its original spot being built in 1888, a full five years before the borough was officially incorporated. The original two-room schoolhouse was built by Rockledge Hall and School Company, according to the borough’s site.
By 1900, the community had grown to a massive 512-person population (no wonder they needed a firehouse and school)
Sadly, in 1902, just a year before the community would have its own firehouse, that elementary school burned down, too. A new, stone building was opened in September of 1903, the same year as the volunteer fire company’s building. It must have been a massive year of growth for the tiny town!
The second, now stone schoolhouse was much larger than the original two-room version. It was built atop the same land as its predecessor on the corner of Robbins and Huntingdon Pike. That same school remained in operation until 1977 when it closed its doors to educational growth. You may know the same structure today as a more familiar location of the Rockledge Borough Municipal Building! Boy, if that stone could tell some stories, it must have seen a lot of the years of its life.
Some of the borough’s oldest homes, according to the site, were built in Rockledge along Lawnview Cemetery and Fox Chase Road, which was the south side of what is now Huntingdon Pike. At that time, the subdivider divvying up the former farmland into housing lots was named Strock. That area of homes, therefore, became “Strockville,” said the history page.
Today, the borough remains its tiny size. It includes 7.31 miles of public roads, 0.85 of which are maintained by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, while 6.46 fall under the borough’s domain. Pennsylvania Route 232 is the only numbered “highway” running through town, so you may often see the same digits as an unofficial representation of Rockledge.
According to the last Census in 2020, the borough’s population has grown from its 1900 number of 512 into a blossoming 2,638 people.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down Rockledge’s Memory Lane and have learned a thing or two about the community’s rich history. Bring on that Rockledge bar trivia. I think we’re ready.
