The Branch B'Locks geocache is a 16-oz water bottle filled with Schuylkill River animals. IMPORTANT: It is hard to give this a Terrain rating, as it is easy to bike there, or a long flat walk, from other entry points, but not from the Sanctuary parking lot. Walkers from that lot will have a paved trail, then a short steep trail that can be slippery with leaves or rain. The RECOMMENDED trail down to river is the one next to the observation deck. You can hold onto the deck while using this trail. A trekking pole would be helpful, but not essential if you have younger knees. The area is well worth exploring, with a fantastic restored wetland park (Black Rock Sanctuary), a dam with a fish ladder, and the old canal entrance.
The Schuylkill Canal Series was launched for the 200th anniversary of the Schuylkill Navigation System, an amazing engineering feat built 1816-1828 and utilized throughout the 19th century. Black Rock Dam is #26 out of the original 32 in the Schuylkill Navigation System. This incredible 108-mile system of dams, slackwater pools, canals, and locks was built by hand to tame the river for transportation and power. It stretched from the coal-rich mountains of Schuylkill County to Philadelphia's landmark Fairmount Water Works.
The more well-known Oakes Canal section begins on the other side of the river; the canal on this side was known as the Phoenixville Branch Canal and only went to one factory in Phoenixville. A remnant of the lock is here by the dam, and the (usually) dry canal bed runs next to the trail. Check it out before heading upriver to look for the cache. Above the dam is the Black Rock Sanctuary, a wetland park with an interpretive trail. It was one of 23 desilting impoundment basins along the Schuylkill, where coal dirt was removed from behind the dams and settled out.
In the 19th century, hundreds of mills and other factories sprang up along the new canals, as coal transported from the mountains literally fueled the Industrial Revolution in this region. Unfortunately, the pollution of the river soon followed. In the 1940s, the river ran black with coal silt and other wastes, and there were no fish at all. The government Schuylkill River Project of 1947-51 dredged and desilted the river and removed most of the dams, so the river could clean itself again. Over the past two decades the American shad has been reintroduced to the Schuylkill. Along with other anadromous fishes, shad swim upriver in the spring using fishways (a.k.a. fish passages or fish ladders). As of 2009, all four remaining Navigation dams – Fairmount, Flat Rock, Norristown, and Black Rock – have fishways. The Schuylkill now has fifty species of fish, as well as other animals that feed on them, including the humans who come to its banks with fishing rods. These are all ecological indicators of watershed health. The Schuylkill is still the drinking water source for half of Philadelphia, as well as Norristown, Phoenixville, and Pottstown.
Native Schuylkill River animals placed in this cache: mallard, water snake, river otter, pumpkinseed fish.
CONGRATULATIONS GeoYakker FIRST TO FIND!