Overhanging Rock

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In suburban Philadelphia, there is a rather unique traffic obstacle along PA Route 320 (South Gulph Road).  A rock outcropping, known as Hanging or Overhanging Rock, jutes out into the northbound lane of the highway.   It sticks out into the travel lane enough that a 7'0" low clearance warning sign is ahead of it and numerous small vans and delivery trucks have to swerve around it.


So why is this rock here?  Wouldn't PennDOT have removed the rock by now?  Well, there's a story behind it and why it is still here - and it involves George Washington.

Overhanging Rock is the site of Washington's Continental Army's last encampment before taking up winter quarters at Valley Forge in 1777.  The encampment lasted roughly six days, December 13th-19th. (1)  It is the historical significance of the rock's location that led to different battles over the rock well over a century later.
Overhanging Rock in 1919. (2) (Free Library of Philadelphia)

Fast forward 140 years to 1917, though in its infancy, the automobile era was well under way and the Pennsylvania Department of Highways wished to remove the rock to widen and improve Gulph Road.  Gulph Road dates back to the early 1700s as a key public road in the area (3)  The Commonwealth's plan to remove the rock was met with strong local resistance led by Lidie McFarland Anderson, who was the wife of District Attorney J. Aubrey Anderson, the Valley Forge Historical Society, the Norristown Times-Herald, and other prominent local residents. (3)

Seven years later in 1924, the state again tried remove the rock; however, Mrs. Anderson foiled them again.  Mrs. Anderson purchased the land surrounding the rock and donated it to the Valley Forge Historical Society.  At the dedication ceremony, Mr. Anderson stated, "Yet there are some people who lightly talk of destroying this historic landmark because it encroaches somewhat on the highway, asserting that it interferes with progress. Let those who would tear it down in the name of progress remember that the progress of which they are so proud was purchased for them by the blood and the suffering of the men who tramped under this very stone in their striving for that Independence, Liberty and Peace which was to become the foundation of America's greatness." (1)

Over the next century, numerous attempts were made by either the Pennsylvania Department of Highways or PennDOT to scale back or remove the rock.  In each case - 1954, 1972, throughout the 1980s, and 1995 - public outcry against the proposal saved the rock from being blasted away.  In 1974, the state also tried to take the rock via eminent domain but lacked the funding to do it.  The rock has been scaled back a few times as a result of these battles as a measure of compromise between progress and preservation. (4)

Overhanging Rock was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.  Now only if this rock could talk, the stories it would be able to tell!

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