The Schuylkill River is an important river running west to east in eastern Pennsylvania, which was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal. Several of its tributaries drain major parts of the center-southern and easternmost Coal Regions in the state. Originating from waters in the Anthracite Coal Region, millions of tons of coal enabling the iron and steel based industries of America's largest city of the day made their way down the waterway to make a great dent in the 19th-century's energy needs. It flows for before joining the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries in Philadelphia.In 1682 William Penn chose the left bank of the confluence upon which he founded the planned city of Philadelphia on lands purchased from the native Delaware nation. It is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River, and its whole length was once part of the Delaware people's southern territories and the historic and economically impactful Schuylkill Canal. The waters of its upper end rise in what are justly called the richest anthracite coal fields in the world.The river's watershed of about 2000mi2 lies entirely within the state of Pennsylvania, the upper portions in the Ridge-and-valley Appalachian Mountains where the folding of the mountain ridges metamorphically modified bituminous into widespread anthracite deposits located north of the Blue Mountain barrier ridge. The source of its eastern branch is in lands now heavily mined situated one ridgeline south of Tuscarora Lake along a drainage divide from the Little Schuylkill about a mile east of the village of Tuscarora and about a mile west of Tamaqua, at Tuscarora Springs in Schuylkill County. The West Branch starts near Minersville and joins the eastern branch at the town of Schuylkill Haven. It then combines with the Little Schuylkill River downstream in the town of Port Clinton. The Tulpehocken Creek joins it at the western edge of Reading. Wissahickon Creek joins it in northwest Philadelphia. Other major tributaries include: Maiden Creek, Manatawny Creek, French Creek, and Perkiomen Creek. The Schuylkill joins the Delaware at the site of the former Philadelphia Navy Yard, now the Philadelphia Naval Business Center, just northeast of Philadelphia International Airport.
