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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 33 |
Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: October 1995 Volume 33 Number 4, Pages 147–151 The Electric Transmission Lines Through Tredyffrin Township The towers which carry the electric transmission lines from Conowingo to Plymouth Meeting and then into Philadelphia marched through the Great Valley of Tredyffrin Township in 1927. Although apparently unrecognized as such, they constituted the largest single development project in the Valley up to that time. Considering the magnitude of the structures, it is surprising that the newspaper clipping files at the Chester County Historical Society carry nary a word about its reception by those living in the Valley at the time. The search for a glimpse of what happened and how life was affected by it led, therefore, to the Chester County Court House, and this brief account has been derived basically from records from the offices of the Recorder of Deeds and the Prothonotary there. The first notable man-made imprint on the landscape of the Valley, aside from Swedesford Road, was the construction of the Chester Valley Railroad, which traversed its level floor from Bridgeport at the Schuylkill River, on the east, to Downingtown at the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, later the Pennsylvania's Main Line, on the west. The original charter for such a railroad was granted in 1835, but it did not come into fruition until 1853 and after the first charter had been revived by the legislature, when the first train of cars passed through this part of Tredyffrin. The right-of-way for the railroad was less than 100 feet wide -- there are indications that it actually was as little as 66 feet wide -- and so in its course across Tredyffrin it consumed no more than sixty acres of what was then prime agricultural land. Almost forty years later the Pennsylvania Railroad hoped it had found a solution to its traffic congestion in the Philadelphia yards and reduced the running time for freight to New York City when it constructed a bypass from Glen Loch, on the main line west of Frazer, to Morrisville and Trenton; it too ran through Tredyffrin, roughly parallel to the Chester Valley line but about a half-mile to the south. Known as the Trenton Cut-off, it opened as a single-track line in 1892, with a second track added a year later. With a 140-foot right-of-way, it chewed up another 100 acres of land in the Valley. It seemed perfectly logical, then, in 1927 for the electric company to locate the towers carrying its transmission lines in this same so-called "railroad corridor" through the length of Tredyffrin, between the tracks of the Chester Valley line and the Trenton Cut-off. To own and construct the lines from Conowingo up to the point where they entered Philadelphia an electric company affiliate, named Philadelphia Electric Power Company, was created. As a real estate project, it represented a truly impressive piece of work. From the western to the eastern border of Tredyffrin is a distance of six miles. The 315-foot strip of land required for the towers carrying the transmission lines that necessitated controlling, at a minimum, 300 acres, almost twice that of the two railroads combined! The land was acquired either by obtaining a "perpetual and exclusive right-of-way and easement to locate, relocate, construct, erect, operate and maintain a line or lines for the purpose of transmitting electric or other power" or by the outright purchase of the land. In its most restrictive form, the right-of-way agreement also reserved for the power company the right "to cut down, trim and/or remove ... adjoining the [right-of-way] on either side for a distance of 50 feet any trees, branches, bushes or any other thing which ... might endanger the safety, interfere with the use of or be a menace to said line or lines, supporting structures or any part thereof or any structures which may now or in the future be located on said right-of-way". This additional 50 feet "on either side" effectively broadened the right-or-way to 415 feet. (This language was actually included in only one agreement, however: that with Daniel B. Frazier, a recalcitrant landowner, and was perhaps added in retribution.) A point that was not lost on the property owners in Tredyffrin was that they were, in fact, not dealing with the supplier of their own electric power, as UGI and other companies at that time served the suburbs and Philadelphia Electric service was restricted to the city proper. The merger of PE into UGI, forming the company we know today as PECO Energy, did not come until after the construction work on the transmission line in the Valley was completed. By 1927 agriculture was on the decline in the valley. Some of the affected properties had already been converted to industrial use; others had become country residences or investment properties for real estate speculation. Of the two dozen or so property owners who faced the prospect of dealing with the electric company, more than half had held title to the property for less than two years. The long-time residents of Tredyffrin seemed to prefer signing right-of-way agreements and remaining on the land, though a few took advantage of the opportunity to sell outright. One such family was the Joseph Williams, who sold their 60 acres outright to settle an estate. Williams had died in 1901, and his widow, in 1913. Nine of their ten children signed the deed to the electric company in 1927, and the other had died earlier, in 1918. (Today the Williams property, which was situated between Howellville Road on the west and the relocated Cassatt Road on the east, and between the Trenton Cut-off on the south and Swedesford Road on the north, is the site of a service facility for the electric company, constructed during the 1970s. The signs at the western and eastern entrances to the facility read "PECO Energy Berwyn Complex", but are silent as to what specifically goes on there.) The earliest document found that relates to the project was an option, dated October 26, 1926, given by Joseph T. Matthews to Philadelphia Electric Power Co. Matthews operated a farm on the western border of Tredyffrin, just north of the tracks of the Trenton Cut-off. The option, for six months but with provision for further extension, gave the company the right to purchase a right-of-way across the farm at a specified price. This was, in fact, the only option-agreement among the many documents filed at the deeds office relating to this project, and seems to indicate that at that early date the exact location of the transmission lines had not yet been determined. Later records make reference to surveys made a few months later. (Curiously, in the option distances were shown in terms of "rods" -- a rod is 16-1/2 feet in length, a unit of measure now rarely used -- but when the option was exercised by the power company six months later, the distances were recorded in feet.) The right-of-way agreement signed by Paul Fleer, who in 1925 had purchased what was the old Abram Latch farm at Contention Lane and Old State Road, contained an unusual provision. It reads: "It is understood and 'agreed that two sets of towers only are to be erected on this section of the right-of-way, one set located about 90 feet west of the Berwyn-Valley Forge Road [Contention Lane] and the other set about 1250 feet west of the Berwyn-Valley Forge Road." [This area today comprises Teegarden Park.] This stipulation would indicate that the towers were to be placed at intervals of approximately 1160 feet, though the Tredyffrin Township highway map, available at the Township Building, shows 26 sets of towers in all, with some of the spans between towers as great as 1500 feet in length. it appears that prime consideration was given to placing the towers at roads, perhaps to give maximum clearance for the transmission line, and that the distances between towers were sometimes stretched in order to do so. In 1923 the state legislature had conferred to utility companies the right and power of condemnation of land, so the property owners could no longer "just say no" to the utility company. The electric company could erect its towers and string its wires -- and if they crossed your property your only choice was to decide whether its offering price was acceptable. If it was not, the next step was to retain an attorney, who could petition the Chester County Court of Common Pleas for a jury of view, which would then determine what it considered a fair price. A quick review of Miscellaneous Docket Book No. 15 for 1928 shows that at least five property owners did so petition the court: Daniel B. Frazier, J. James Cancelmo, J. Howard Mecke Jr., Edwin W. Thomas, and C. Colket Wilson. Only Mecke appears to have met with much success, however. J. Howard Mecke Jr. was a well-known real estate developer in this area in the 1920s. He was a son-in-law of John H. McClatchey, the developer of the 69th Street business district in Upper Darby, and owned, at one time or another, the old Covered Wagon Inn, and both the King of Prussia Inn and the Peacock Gardens Inn. (Carol Creutzberg, writing in the Suburban on August 8, 1991, described him as "an entrepreneur whose ideas flowed in a never ending stream".) He lived for a time on the Colket Walker farm at Old Eagle School and Swedesford roads, which he had bought in 1924. Later he moved just over the eastern boundary of Tredyffrin into Upper Merion, where, in 1928, he embarked on the Colonial Village residential development and established the Colonial Village Swimming Club for the purchasers of his homes. Mecke had also purchased, in 1925, a tract of 109 acres in Tredyffrin, to the west of the Colket Walker farm, located on the south side of Swedesford Road, stretching west to West Valley Road. Later deeds indicate that he had plans for a development, to be known as Strafford Farms, here. The Philadelphia Electric's Conowingo project intervened, however, and led to an astonishing series of transfers in ownership for this tract of land. On September 18, 1926 Mecke sold it to Charles and Irene Gano, of Haverford township. Three days later the Ganos transferred it to Alice Detwiler, single-woman, of Philadelphia, obviously a "straw party". A day later a deed transferred ownership again, to Irene Gano. Not too many months after that the towers and electric transmission lines were constructed over the property, effectively precluding residential development of the site. Apparently the Ganos had had enough; they returned the deed to Mecke on December 28, 1927, and assigned to him their interest in any condemnation proceedings. The Strafford Farms development was never built and the economic consequences are difficult to ascertain with all the mortgages that were passed around with each transfer of the real estate. But with all that, Mecke did salvage the highest per-acre compensation from the power company for this property, compared with other settlements in the Valley, receiving over $1800 an acre while others settled for as little as $300 or $400 an acre. While some of the documents do not disclose the amount of the settlement, using instead the term "$1.00 and other good and valuable consideration", the average of the settlements for which the amount was shown was $800 per acre. Some of the property owners, for whatever reason, went to great lengths to disguise the results of their negotiations with the power company. Besides recording the settlement received from the power company as "1.00", the agreement signed by Samuel McDowell used the name of a "straw party", Electric Realty Corporation, rather than Philadelphia Electric, as the grantee. Apparently instead of using a standard contract, each agreement was individually tailored by the attorneys of both the power company and the affected property owner. What may have been the last document executed on this matter in Tredyffrin was a right-of-way grant signed by Emily Rambo Anderson Wilson on January 23, 1930. C. Colket Wilson, secretary/treasurer of the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad and Emily's husband, had been pursuing a court petition for the appointment of a jury of view to determine an equitable compensation for the right-of-way. He died suddenly on January 23, 1929, and it was one year later to the day that his widow put the matter behind her by signing off on the dispute. In all, 26 Tredyffrin properties were affected by the location of the transmission lines in the Valley. Of these, 19 lost more than ten acres of land each. They were, from west to east:
Joseph T. Matthews, Westfrin Farm In all, 460 acres, including the sizeable acreage of the Williams and Duebler tracts, passed into the control of the electric company. But still more major projects were to affect the residents in the Valley in the years to come. Expressways for the torrent of automobiles unleashed following the end of World War II were to take their toll on the quality of life in the Great Valley. The eastern extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike cut a 6.2-mile swath across the landscape in 1950, followed by a major construction project on U. S. Route 202 in 1965-66. Development in the area is now the rule, rather than the exception -- the legacy of those early first steps taken in the "railroad corridor". |
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