City Island: Baseball, Floods, and the River at the Center

The mile-long island sitting in the Susquehanna River directly across from downtown Harrisburg has been many things: a Susquehannock seasonal settlement, a truck farm, an amusement park, and for well over a century, a baseball field. It is still a baseball field, and it remains the geographic and symbolic center of Harrisburg's relationship with its river.

Archaeological evidence shows that Native peoples established camps here, using the island's sheltered position as a base for fishing and hunting. The first Europeans could only reach it by boat or by fording in low water, a limitation that lasted until eighteen seventeen, when the Camelback Bridge, ancestor of the modern Market Street Bridge, connected it to both banks.

Baseball came to City Island in the eighteen eighties, when amateur games were played on the flat ground near the eastern shore. By nineteen oh three, professional ball had arrived with the Harrisburg Athletics, and the island later became part of the Negro leagues. Satchel Paige played at Island Park. Babe Ruth came to town in nineteen twenty-eight when the New York Yankees scrimmaged against the Harrisburg Senators, and according to accounts of the game, Ruth hit a ball into the river.

The river itself has never let the island forget who is in charge. The Susquehanna flooded catastrophically in nineteen thirty-six, when the water rose to levels not recorded in two centuries. It flooded again in nineteen seventy-two during Hurricane Agnes, putting thirteen feet of water over parts of Harrisburg and forcing the Governor to evacuate the Executive Mansion by boat. City Island went under both times.

Today the island holds the Harrisburg Senators ballpark, volleyball courts, a paddlewheel riverboat, and a small train that circles the perimeter for tourists. The river runs on both sides, quiet for now.