[3] Joshua Fisher settled in Lewes, Delaware, marrying Sarah Rodman, and as a young man started a hat-making business using the locally plentiful animal skins.

He developed a robust transatlantic trade in animal pelts and became wealthy, moving his family to downtown Philadelphia in 1746, and building the Cliffs as a country getaway.

He brought his family to the Cliffs house and farm in the summer and they grew up interested in nature, with an appreciation of the Quaker testimony of simplicity.

The clay had been trucked into the site in order to cover an area near the house used as a dump for refuse from various municipal construction projects.

It is visible from the Schuylkill Expressway and the West River Drive just north of the Girard Avenue bridge in the winter months when the foliage has dropped from the trees.