As the John Hills map shows,  the land in Roxborough Township along the Schuylkill River was virtually  uninhabited in 1808. Almost all development in Roxborough at the time  was located along Ridge Road and around the several mills on the  Wissahickon Creek. Manayunk had not yet been established in the first  decade of the nineteenth century. However, with the discovery of  anthracite coal in 1790 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, 80 miles upstream  on the Schuylkill River, and the subsequent discovery of a method for  igniting anthracite coal in 1808, development of the Schulkill bank in  Roxborough progressed quickly in the early nineteenth century. In 1810,  the Flat Rock Bridge was constructed at the base on Domino Lane across  the Schuylkill River to Montgomery County.61 Domino Lane, which ran down from Ridge Road, was officially confirmed in 1819.62 In 1815, the Manayunk & Flat Rock Turnpike Company was chartered to  build a roadway along the Schuylkill from Ridge Road west of the  Wissahickon Creek to the Flat Rock Bridge, thereby opening Manayunk for  development. Most significantly, in 1815, the Pennsylvania Legislature  chartered the Schuylkill Navigation Company to build a system of canals,  dams, and slackwater pools along the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia  to the coal mining region at Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The company  built 120 locks and the first ever canal tunnel. The Flat Rock Dam in  Roxborough, a part of the canal system, was completed in 1819 and not  only facilitated transportation on the river, but also served as a  significant source of water power for mills. Despite several financial  and technological setbacks, the canal system between Philadelphia’s  Fairmount Water Works and Reading became navigable in 1824. The first  boatload of coal arrived in Philadelphia in 1825. An extension of the  canal to Port Carbon, at the mouth of Mill Creek in Schuylkill County,  completed in 1828, made the Schuylkill River Pennsylvania’s most  efficient mode of transportation for anthracite coal for the following  decade and a half. By the early 1840s, some 500,000 tons of anthracite  coal was being transported annually to Philadelphia using the Schuylkill  River (Figure 21).

Taking advantage of the water  power furnished by the Flat Rock Dam, John Towers built the first mill  in Manayunk in 1819, the year the dam was completed. Charles Hagner  built a second mill in 1820. Two mills were erected 1821 and five more  in 1822. Almost overnight, the mill village of Manayunk emerged along  the east bank of the Schuylkill in Roxborough Township. From 1817 to  1824, the population of Manayunk grew from 60 to nearly 800 people, and  by the late 1820s the community had become known alternately as the  “Lowell of Pennsylvania” and the “Manchester of America.” In 1827,  engraver C.G. Childs noted the rapid development of Manayunk, reporting  that:

The  thriving little village [of Manayunk] is situated on the banks of the  river and of the canal, at the distance about six miles from  Philadelphia. It derives its name from the aboriginal title of the  Schuylkill, and owes its origin to the improvements which have been made  upon that stream. Within the last twelve years, the spot which it  covers was singularly wild and secluded. High and barren rocks overhung  the river, crowned by thickets which were scarcely broken; and the broad  projecting cliff, which gave for a time the name Flat Rock to the early  settlement, remained nearly inaccessible, as when it was the chosen  encamping ground of the Indian hunter. Manayunk is now [in 1827] the  scene of active and extended business. It contains sixteen  manufactories, five of which give motion to sixteen thousand spindles,  and to two hundred and fifty power looms,— two schools, a neat and  capacious place of worship, four taverns, and about two hundred  tenements, which accommodate some fifteen hundred inhabitants.63