When I was about eleven, my brother and I roamed our northeast Reading neighborhood collecting newspapers for recycling. We rigged our wooden wagon with tall side boards so we could heap it until it wobbled by day’s end. Back home, we stacked the papers on the back porch, where our grandfather tied them into tight bundles. Every Saturday morning we loaded them into my mom’s station wagon, drove to the paper mill, backed up to the dock, unloaded, weighed the stacks, and collected a few dollars for our haul.
I didn’t know it then, but those Saturday morning trips connected me to a much older story—one of immigrant ambition, industrial innovation, and the paper mills that once dotted Berks County’s creeks and rivers. The most prominent of these was the Van Reed Paper Mill, which stood for over a century at the confluence of the Cacoosing and Tulpehocken creeks, producing everything from newsprint to moth bags.
The story of the Van Reed family in Berks County is one of industrial ambition, innovation, and enduring legacy—though even their origins are shrouded in some historical confusion. According to historian Morton L. Montgomery, Henry Van Reed, born in Holland on March 10, 1722, was the original ancestor of all Van Reeds in America. Yet curiously, Montgomery later claimed in a different publication that John Van Reed, who died in 1820 at age 73, was the family’s progenitor in Berks County. Such contradictions extend even to the physical evidence: a house associated with the family bears a datestone marking its construction as 1773 in solid stone, despite later documentation describing it as a frame structure built in 1776.
Whatever the precise genealogical details, what remains clear is that Henry Van Reed and his brother Jacob emigrated from Holland to Philadelphia in 1750. They moved westward through Montgomery County into Amity Township in Berks County, eventually settling in the fertile valley where the Tulpehocken and Cacoosing creeks converge. While Jacob had one son who died young and unmarried, Henry’s line would continue for generations, building an industrial empire along Pennsylvania’s waterways.
Mills, Paper, and the Price of Progress
Around 1825, Henry Van Reed constructed a dam and paper mill at the confluence of the Cacoosing and Tulpehocken creeks. The location was no accident. Water power was the lifeblood of 19th-century industry, and the Van Reeds had secured prime real estate where two waterways combined their force.
The operation grew into a sprawling enterprise. The Van Reeds eventually owned multiple paper mills, a fulling mill for processing wool, and a sawmill. They operated a warehouse on the nearby Union Canal, that ambitious engineering project that briefly connected Reading to the Susquehanna River and beyond. At its peak, the main paper mill employed about 20 workers and churned out 350 tons of paper annually—manila paper, high-grade book paper, newsprint, foolscap, and even confectionery bag paper for wrapping sweets.
The family maintained an office and warehouse in Reading at 12 South 5th Street, serving as suppliers to local newspapers and businesses. Their moth bags and specialty papers became household items across the region, advertised in newspapers with the confidence of a business that knew its value.
Fire, Resurrection, and Rivalry
On August 17, 1888, disaster struck. At about 5 p.m., dry rags and overheated machinery ignited a spectacular blaze that consumed much of the mill. Volunteers from the Neversink Fire Company in Reading raced their engine along five miles of rugged roads, swapping exhausted horses for fresh ones provided by farmers along the way. Drawing water from the Cacoosing Creek, they managed to extinguish the flames—but not before causing damages estimated between $25,000 and $50,000.
The fire made national news, not merely for its scale but for the mill’s historical significance. During the Revolutionary War, when the building served as a gristmill, it had supplied flour to George Washington’s troops at Valley Forge. Robert Morris, the Revolution’s financier and first U.S. Treasurer, had personally arranged purchases from Van Reed to feed the starving Continental Army in the brutal winter of 1777-78.
Charles L. Van Reed, then leading the family business, wasted no time mourning. Within weeks, he announced the purchase of new boilers, bleachers, heaters, and other modern equipment. The rebuilt mill began operations on January 3, 1889, with state-of-the-art machinery and expanded capacity. The Reading Times proudly reported that its first regular order came from their own presses.
The Reading Eagle, the Times’ rival newspaper, never mentioned the fire—a curious silence that speaks to the competitive dynamics of 19th-century journalism and perhaps the Van Reeds’ choice of business partners.
Art as Evidence: Hofmann’s 1872 Mill
Art fixes the look and labor of the place in ways photographs sometimes cannot. Henry Z. Van Reed had commissioned Charles C. Hofmann. Hofmann’s canvas, now counted among works in national collections, shows the yard as a kinetic scene: a corpulent, cigar-smoking proprietor bargaining out front while a mule team unloads rags; above, a long, light-washed loft where women sort fiber, and below, a steam-powered operation not yet substantially modernized.
View of Henry Z Van Reeds Farm Papermill and Surroundings by Charles C. Hofmann.
By the 1890s the long family tenure was nearing its end. Notices appeared in April 1896 for the clearance sale of “the entire stock of C. L. Van Reed’s Paper Store” on Penn Street. Corporate successors followed: Acme Paper Company purchased the mill on January 2, 1913; in 1943 Acme merged into Federal Paper Board Company, and the works became “The Reading Mill.” In the 20th-century’s back half the site slid into disuse, an “abandoned relic of a once-thriving industry”—a phrase that captures not only physical decline but the broader shift from water-and-steam regional manufacture to consolidated, off-site production.
Acme Paper Mill
The Bridge That Connected Communities
Parallel to the mill’s story runs the tale of the Van Reed Covered Bridge, a 140-foot span that carried travelers over the Tulpehocken Creek. Built in 1834, then rebuilt after the devastating flood of September 2, 1850 by Jonathan Bitner, the bridge served as a vital artery for the region.
The structure was distinctive—one of the few covered bridges in Berks County featuring windows. Four louvered openings on each side allowed light to penetrate the interior while keeping out rain. When the state assumed control of local bridges, Van Reed’s was among those painted white, giving it a distinctive appearance in the valley.
For 109 years, the bridge carried traffic across the creek. Then came August 9, 1959, when Paul Dellinger drove his 5.5-ton trailer truck loaded with 16 tons of roofing shingles and tar paper onto the structure—despite a posted four-ton weight limit. As he shifted gears at the bridge’s midpoint, the floor gave way. The trailer plunged into the Tulpehocken Creek below.
Van Reed Bridge
Dellinger claimed he hadn’t seen the weight limit sign. His penalty—a $10 fine plus court costs—seems almost quaint by modern standards. But removing his truck from the wreckage proved nightmarish; county workmen struggled with flooring that had become “spongy” from years of deferred maintenance.
The truck incident exposed deeper issues with the bridge’s condition and ownership. A bureaucratic gray area existed—the county had built the bridge but claimed in 1936 that any bridge on a state road belonged to the state. Meanwhile, both entities performed occasional repairs without clarifying responsibility.
The bridge limped along for another five years. Over half the roof became exposed, allowing rain and snow to rot the internal timbers. By early 1964, a battle emerged over the structure’s fate. County officials wanted to preserve it as a historic landmark. The state wanted it demolished.
In March 1964, County Commissioner Vernon K. Shaffer announced that the state had agreed to spend an estimated $15,000 to restore the bridge for pedestrian and bicycle traffic only, creating a historic tourist attraction. The stipulation was simple: some reliable organization must assume responsibility for its upkeep.
“It would not be difficult getting some organization to assume responsibility,” Shaffer optimistically predicted.
By July, the state had changed its mind. Highway Secretary Henry D. Harral declared the bridge beyond saving. The restoration estimate had somehow ballooned to $91,000—a sixfold increase that made demolition’s $2,500 price tag look reasonable by comparison. In late August 1964, workers began tearing down the structure. Within days, the remains lay in the Tulpehocken Creek. The road was condemned and closed. No replacement bridge was ever built.
Today, only the stone abutments remain, accessible via a short walk from the Union Canal Bicycle & Walking Trail. Stop #10 along the trail marks where neighbors once crossed to visit each other, where farmers brought goods to market, where a community was literally bridged.
The Last Revolution: Unbuilding the Past
For nearly two centuries, a dam at the confluence of the Cacoosing and Tulpehocken creeks served the Van Reed mills. The 120-foot-long, eight-foot-high structure, last rebuilt in 1959, had long outlived its industrial purpose.
By 2020, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and Department of Environmental Protection determined it was time for the obsolete dam to come down. The environmental organization American Rivers was brought in to manage the removal, funded by a $275,441 state grant for dam removal and stream bank restoration.
The Van Reed dam was one of more than 90,000 dams built across America during the Industrial Revolution. Many are now outdated, unsafe, or no longer serve any purpose. Dams stop water flow, change water quality and temperature, and block aquatic life from moving upstream and downstream, creating problems for entire ecosystems.
The removal would restore more than seven miles of habitat for American eel, trout, blacknose dace, and white suckers. Pennsylvania leads the nation in dam removal, part of a broader movement that has seen over 1,700 dams removed nationwide.
Originally scheduled for 2020, the project encountered permit delays and other complications. The dam was finally removed in July 2022, allowing the Cacoosing to flow freely into the Tulpehocken for the first time in nearly two centuries.
What Henry Van Reed built around 1825 as a symbol of industrial progress has been removed in the name of environmental restoration—a shift from harnessing rivers for power to restoring them for ecological health.
Legacies Reconsidered
Today, visitors to the Union Canal Bicycle & Walking Trail can find Stop #10 marking the site of the Van Reed covered bridge. A short walk along a dirt path leads to the weathered stone abutments—all that remains of the bridge that once carried commerce and community across the Tulpehocken. The mill buildings stand abandoned, the dam has been removed, and the waterways flow freely once more.
The Van Reed story encapsulates the arc of American industrial history: immigrant ambition, entrepreneurial success, technological adaptation, eventual decline, and finally environmental restoration. From Holland to Pennsylvania, from waterwheels to moth bags, from Revolutionary War flour to modern river ecology, the Van Reeds left an indelible mark on Berks County—one measured not just in tons of paper produced, but in the very landscape they transformed and which, in turn, transformed again.
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