How did Geddes Run in Pennsylvania get its name? This page provides a brief history about Geddes Run in Pennsylvania, the people who settled around it, and the industry rising around it.
A Creek wholly in Plumstead Township, rising near Plumsteadville and flowing in an easterly direction for oh miles to join Tohickon Creek at Point Pleasant. Its valley is shallow around the creek’s source and steep and gorge-like at its eastern end on the Delaware, supplying some of Bucks County’s most attractive scenery. The valley has distinction in scientific circles from its Indian quarry on the south side of the creek, a short distance above Point Pleasant, where countless “turtlebacks,” fashioned out of local argillite by Lenape Indians, could be found.” Following a terrific rainstorm resembling a cloudburst on the afternoon of August 24, 1891, this stream carried the greatest known flood in its history. The water roared through the deep gorge in spectacular volume. Solomon Fulmer’s store and dwelling at Point Pleasant, the entire stock of merchandise, the ground upon which the buildings stood and a thick stone buttress that supported them were all swept down the current into the Delaware River. The bridge over the run near the Fulmer buildings was entirely destroyed and the Tohickon covered bridge was badly wrecked. The rainfall for the twenty-four hours preceding the flood, which registered 5.21 inches in the official gauge at Doylestown, was estimated to have been 7 inches in Geddes Run valley. On the southeast bank of the creek, not far from the old Indian quarry, is a famous “bluestone” quarry, operated for many years by the late Nicholas L. Heaney, who supplied many thousands of feet of curbstone and flagstone for Doylestown’s streets before stone for that purpose was supplanted by concrete. “This Indian quarry is fully illustrated and described by Dr. Harry C. Mercer under the title, “The Red Man’s Bucks County,” in Papers Read before The Bucks County Historical Society, Vol. II, p. 267.