The Ghost of the Delaware - Windmill Island

Very few people today know that there were islands in the center of the Delaware River between the downtown areas of Philadelphia and Camden. First noted on 1600’s maps, they gradually changed shape number and name over the years. At their peak they extended from Market St to South St in Philly and Cooper St to the Susquehanna Center in Camden. At first they were considered part of New Jersey but later to settle the matter between the states they were traded to Pennsylvania for Petty’s Island.

Pre-William Penn 1600's Dutch Map showing the islands

They were first known as the Windmill Islands. A 1702 illustration shows a windmill in the Delaware.  Later records show that Harding & Son operated the windmill beginning in 1746 It was located nearer the PA side of the rivers across from today’s Wiggins Park. 

 

Map showing a  sandbar from Camden to the island. At first it was little more than a mud flat or shoal that extended south from Camden's Coopers Point. It would sometimes disappear after heavy rains or higher tides. The windmill was built on a wooden wharf along with a small house.

 It was used as a mill to grind grain that was either brought over by boat or via horse & wagon that could make it over across a shoal from Camden at low tide.  Some say that a sunken barge original created the island, but others say this is legend but a colonial illustration of the island appears to show a hull of a structure at the northern point.  As time went on the blocking action of this structure and fill dirt deposited caused the island to increase in size to the point it became a permanent fixture in the river. 

Philadelphia 1702 - Note on lower-left, the drawbridge over  Dock Creek(today's Dock Street). This is where William Penn landed twenty years earlier, choosing the site for his city

 

Another early view with the windmill, but it is erroneously misplaced on the Camden Side

 

What happened to the windmill is another mystery. It was still shown on Revolutionary War era maps. It fell into disrepair after the elder Harding died. Legend says it blew into the air during a storm and landed in a South Camden orchard where it became a play thing for the local children.

1776 Map with windmill at northern tip of island

This island itself then went largely unused for decades. It continued to expand in size as up river silt would collect on its shallow shoals . Local boaters from both shores would use it as place to swim and carouse. Around 1796 a local ferry operator erected a halfway house on the island to shelter passengers while waiting for danger currents or ice floes.

 

A post Revolutionary War view from Camden - no windmill, but a structure with flag at the north point of the upstream island, and  a house on the south island and what appears to be a marsh between two islands. 

Gradually the island covered with trees which may have been planted there to help hold the soil. The islands were especially known for their  weeping willow trees those root system thrived near the water’s edge. The trees later had another purpose. The local prisons used them to hang convicted murders. One of the more famous hangings was in 1800 when three crewmen hijacked the Schooner Eliza on its trip from Philadelphia to St Thomas. They killed all of the remaining crew except the captain who barricaded himself in his cabin with the only firearm on the ship. He was eventually able to overpower and capture the pirates, who were returned to Philadelphia and sentenced to death which was carried out on Windmill Island. ( a link to the captain's story below) As a result the island became a place of superstition and legend, with stories of pirates and ghost. These yarns and tales were very much propagated by the next owners of the island, Tom & John Smith

A NARRATIVE OF THE Horrid Murder & Piracy COMMITTED ON BOARD THE SCHOONER ELIZA

 

The John Smith Steamship on Smith Island

By the 1830’s the north island had become a popular destination, especially with the lower classes and it had become established as a bathing resort. The Smith brothers built baths, saloons, a restaurant and a beer garden. They even took the remains of an old ship and placed on the northern tip of the island, covered the deck with a roof and transformed it into a dance hall and bar. The two brothers also each had small passenger steamboats named after them to ferry passengers over to their pleasure isle.

1863 view of Windmill Island from Camden

1863 View of Smith Island from Philadelphia

 A columnist for the Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper once wrote about the place “…what a clergyman called “The Devils' Isle,” and the dumping place of the gregarious vice of the town that it is quite better that it should be forgotten and sunk beneath the waves. And yet there are many to whom the name of “Smith's Island” will bring up the jolliest of the innocent memories of a Philadelphia boyhood.”

Swimming on Smith Island

Something else happened in the 1830’s that would change the island. It was the coming of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. The western terminus of this line was placed along the Delaware banks, directly east of the island and a ferry was established to transport passenger to and from Philadelphia. But the Camden and Philadelphia Steamboat Co had a few problems. Their boats had to navigate around the islands. It was more dangerous, took longer than their competitors and they had to share the existing channel with them. The solution was to cut a canal through the center marsh area between Windmill and Smith Islands. The politicians in Harrisburg approved the railroad/ferry plan, of course, and by 1840 the island was cut in two with ferries running through the center. Now the north portion with “amusements” became known as “Smith’s Island” and the southern part remained “Windmill Island”

Steamboats from Camden and Philadelphia Ferry Co through island canal

For 60 years the islands flourished. Windmill was at first just a small strip of land but over time it was widened and became a place where boats would unload coal brought down from the Lehigh River A lead smelting plant was built and a hotel the “Point Airy” was built on the south tip. Meanwhile Smith’s remained as a place of merriment.

For Sale July 1871

Point Airy Hotel , south point of Windmill Island

In 1880 the Smith Family sold their island to John J Ridgeway, a successful Philadelphia businessman who also operated the famous Ridgeway House Hotel at the foot of Delaware Ave and Market St. He decided to transform Smith’s into a more family friendly and respectable park. It was renamed Ridgeway Park

Added were a roller skating rink, a bowling alley, a pool hall, a carousel, a shooting gallery and a an early type roller coaster called a switchback railway.

The dance hall was changed to a roller skating rink, the bath and swimming areas were improved and enlarged, a band shell was installed, a hotel, an ice cream/candy parlor and raised viewing platforms for viewing the vibrant Philadelphia waterfront .  Newspapers of the day advertised jugglers, magicians, tightrope walkers and balloon ascents. They even had their own police force to keep out “the rough element, which had given Smith's Island a bad name in former seasons”

Note the grandstands along the shore of the island where visitors would sit and watch the activity in the river.

Ridgeway Park & Hotel

1840

View of north side of Smith Island -Winter 1893. Camden left, Philadelphia right

View Down Market Street in Camden - 1830's

 But the pressure of progress and commerce spelled doom for the islands. The only deep-water navigable channel was on the Philadelphia side. With the increasing size and number of ships on the Delaware, the islands were in the way! In 1891 the federal government said they had to go and within a few years they were just a memory. Their dirt and rock were used to fill the marshes around the Navy Yard and what was to become FDR Park.


 So if you ever take the River Link Ferry between the Aquarium and Penn’s Landing, pause about 2/3rds of the way across and listen for the laughter of the thousands or more likely millions that once enjoyed this mid river respite, but watch out for the ghost of the pirates and murders.