We protect the historic potholes of Old Fenwick from being filled.
The Pothole Preservation Society identifies, documents, and defends the borough's most significant potholes. We keep a formal Register, dedicate bronze plaques, lead walking tours, and restore neglected potholes to their full depth. Since 1987 we have stood between these craters and the patching crews.
The Mulberry Street Crater
First recorded in the spring of 1987, this pothole has remained open through nine mayors, the ice storm of 1994, and fourteen scheduled repairs.
Its preservation led directly to the founding of the Pothole Preservation Society.
The Pothole Preservation Society · 1987
Save the Mulberry Street Crater
Borough Public Works has scheduled the Mulberry Street Crater for a cold patch on Wednesday, October 14. It will be the fifteenth attempt. Your gift funds an emergency injunction filing, a structural assessment, and a volunteer vigil crew with folding chairs.
Thirty-nine years of standing in the road
Our programs
Most of our work happens on the street, in reflective vests, with the traffic going around us.
The Register
Volunteers survey, photograph, and measure every candidate pothole. Those that meet our criteria for age, integrity, and significance are listed on the Old Fenwick Register of Historic Potholes.
Browse the Register →
Bronze plaques
Thirty-one Register potholes now have a cast bronze plaque on a granite post, telling passersby what they are driving into and why it matters.
The plaque program →
Restoration
Neglected potholes fill with dirt, leaves, and litter. Our restoration teams clear them by hand and return them to their original depth and water level.
See our restorations →
Crater Walks
Docent-led walking tours of the Register run every Saturday from April through November, rain or shine. Rain is better.
Book a walk →Potholes in our care
Four of the sixty-four potholes currently listed. Most are available for adoption.
It started with a flat tire
In April 1987, Marjorie Pelt, a fourth-grade teacher at Fenwick Elementary, drove her Buick into a pothole on Mulberry Street and blew out the front tire. Most people would have called the borough. Marjorie got out, looked at the layered edges of the hole, and saw sixty years of paving history staring back at her.
She measured it, photographed it, and started a file. Within a year the file had forty potholes in it and eleven members, who met on Tuesday nights in the Fenwick library's community room. When the first patching crew arrived on Mulberry Street that summer, Marjorie was already sitting next to the crater in a lawn chair.
Marjorie led the Society until 2011. Her lawn chair is displayed at every Crater Ball.
Give a pothole someone to look out for it
For $100 a year, you become the official adopter of a Register pothole. You'll receive a personalized certificate, quarterly condition reports with photographs and depth readings, and your name on its Register page.
Adoptions make wonderful gifts for new homeowners, retiring road engineers, and anyone who has ever said "someone should do something about that pothole."
