The area between the Valley Forge Historical National Park Welcome Center and the Schuylkill River was once the thriving industrial village of Port Kennedy where the main business was quarrying limestone and shipping lime. Here is the notice of sale of the limestone land and quarries of David Zook published in the Norristown Register and Montgomery Democrat on Tuesday, November 30, 1852.
At Port Kennedy, in Upper Merion Township, the subscriber desirous of relinquishing the Lime business, offers at Private Sale, his Limekilns, quarries and about 13¾ acres of limestone land at Port Kennedy. There are two quarries now open, one of them about 60 feet deep and the other about 40 feet deep, and both may be sunk many feet deeper and drained. The whole height may be increased to over 100 feet, thus furnishing the largest amount of good limestone there is to be found in the County of Montgomery.
There are five kilns all in good order, a stone office, two stone dwellings, a frame dwelling and a large frame stable.
The whole to be sold together or divided into two lots, the largest of 10½ acres with the largest and deepest Quarry, office and five kilns thereon, and the lot with the residue of improvements contains 3¼ acres.
There is a right of road down to the River in connexion with the Kilns and Quarries, a large basin and wharves on the Schuylkill River.
The Subscriber has expended a large sum of money in making good roads into his Quarries, in building bridges over the roads about his kilns, and he now offers all for sale, confident that upon examination, this will be found the best in Kennedy’s Hollow, for an immediate and profitable business, and where the quantity of limestone far exceeds any other single property on the River Schuylkill. For terms apply on the premises to David Zook, August 24, 1852.
Courtesy of the Tredyffrin Eastton Historical Society History Quarterly Digital Archives.