October 8, 2007history
Frick’s Lock is a small ghost town of approximately ten buildings located in Chester County Pennsylvania. The name “Frick” comes from John Frick, whose land became officially known as Frick’s Village in 1815. Some of the houses are fifty years old, some date back to the 1700s. Due to its close proximity to the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant, the deserted village was declared officially inhabitable in 1968 when the Power Plant began operations.
It’s amazing that some of these houses are old enough to have seen the Revolutionary War, and yet here they sit in a state of extreme neglect and disrepair. In the 1800s, Frick’s Lock Village was a thriving commercial boat town, its livelihood stemming from the nearby lock used to transport commercial goods. The Schuykill Navigation Company routed a 60-mile canal directly through Frick’s Lock in approximately 1820, which served as a successful method of commercial transportation until 1890 when Schuykill went bankrupt and the lock was closed down.
By the 1930s the canals had been drained, and by the 1960s there was no opposition to the building of a close proximity nuclear power plant since the village was in such a dire state. The Philadelphia Electric Company purchased the houses and the village has been deserted ever since.
Today the village is part of the National Register of Historic Places, but nothing is currently being done to stabilize the houses or prevent further degradation.