Delaware River: Difference between revisions

For the Delaware River in Kansas, see Delaware River (Kansas).

Template:Geobox The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Its watershed drains an area of 14,119 square miles (36,570 km²) in five U.S. states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. Rising in two branches in New York state's Catskill Mountains, the river flows 419 miles (674 km) into Delaware Bay where its waters enter the Atlantic Ocean near Cape May in New Jersey and Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Not including Delaware Bay, the river's length including its two branches is 388 miles (624 km). The Delaware River is one of nineteen "Great Waters" recognized by the America's Great Waters Coalition.

The Delaware River rises in two main branches that descend from the western flank of the Catskill Mountains in New York. The West Branch begins near Mount Jefferson in the Town of Jefferson in Schoharie County. The river's East Branch begins at Grand Gorge near Roxbury Delaware County. These two branches flow west and merge near Hancock in Delaware County and the combined waters flow as the Delaware River south. Through its course, the Delaware River forms the boundaries between Pennsylvania and New York, the entire boundary between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and most of the boundary between Delaware and New Jersey. The river meets tide-water at Trenton, New Jersey (once called "Falls of the Delaware") and the river's navigable and tidal section served as a conduit for shipping and transportation that aided the development of the industrial cities of Trenton, Camden and Philadelphia. The mean freshwater discharge of the Delaware River into the estuary of Delaware Bay is 11,550 cubic feet (330 m³) per second.

In 1609, the river was first visited by a Dutch East India Company expedition led by Henry Hudson. Hudson, an English navigator, was hired to find a western route to Cathay (present-day China), but his discoveries set the stage for Dutch colonization of North America in the seventeenth-century. Early Dutch and Swedish settlements were established along the lower section of river and Delaware Bay. Both colonial powers called the river the South River compared to the Hudson River which was known as the North River. After the English expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664, the river was renamed Delaware after Sir Thomas West 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War.

Origin of the name

Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr

The Delaware River is named in honor of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (1577–1618), an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War. Lord de la Warr waged a punitive campaign to subdue the Powhatan after they had killed the colony’s council president, John Ratcliffe, and attacked the colony’s fledgling settlements. Lord de la Warr arrived 150 soldiers in time to prevent colony’s original settlers at Jamestown from giving up and returning to England and is credited with saving the Virginia colony. The name of barony (later an earldom) is pronounced as in the current spelling form "Delaware" (/ˈdɛləwɛər/ ^ⓘ DEL-ə-wair).

The river and bay received the name "Delaware" after English forces under Richard Nicolls expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664. The state of Delaware was originally part of the William Penn's Pennsylvania colony. In 1682, the Duke of York granted Penn's request for access to the sea and leased him the territory along the western shore of Delaware Bay which became known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware." In 1704, these three lower counties were given political autonomy to form a separate provincial assembly, but shared its provincial governor with Pennsylvania until the two colonies separated on 15 June 1776. The name also became used as a collective name for the Lenape, a Native American people (and their language) who inhabited an area of the basins of the Susquehanna River, Delaware River, and lower Hudson River in the northeastern United States at the time of European settlement. As a result of disruption following the French & Indian War, American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, the name "Delaware" has been spread with the Lenape's diaspora to municipalities, counties and other geographical features in the American Midwest and Canada.

Course

West Branch of the Delaware

The West or Mohawk branch rises in Schoharie County, New York, about 1,886 feet (575 m) above sea level, near Mount Jefferson, and flows tortuously through the plateau in a deep trough, impounded at one point to create the Cannonsville Reservoir, and then becoming the state boundary of New York and Pennsylvania at the 42nd parallel, until it emerges from the Catskills.

East Branch of the Delaware

Similarly, the East Branch begins from a small pond south of Grand Gorge in the town of Roxbury in Delaware County, flowing southwest toward its impoundment by New York City to create the Pepacton Reservoir, the largest reservoir in the New York City water supply system. Its tributaries are the Beaver Kill River and the Willowemoc Creek which enter into the river ten miles (16 km) before the West Branch meets the East Branch. The confluence of the two branches is just south of Hancock.

Both the East Branch and West Branch of the Delaware River parallel each other, both flowing in a southwesterly direction.

Upper Delaware Valley

Canoeing on the river at Hawk's Nest, New York

From Hancock, the river flows between The Poconos and the lowered shale beds north of the Catskills. The river flows down a broad Appalachian valley, passing Hawk's Nest overlook on the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway.

The Minisink

See also: Minisink

At Port Jervis, New York, it enters the Port Jervis trough. At this point, the Walpack Ridge deflects the Delaware into the Minisink Valley, where it follows the southwest strike of the eroded Marcellus Formation beds along the Pennsylvania–New Jersey state line for 25 miles (40 km) to the end of the ridge at Walpack Bend in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The Minisink is a buried valley where the Delaware flows in a bed of glacial till that buried the eroded bedrock during the last glacial period. It then skirts the Kittatinny ridge, which it crosses at the Delaware Water Gap, between nearly vertical walls of sandstone, quartzite, and conglomerate, and then passes through a quiet and charming country of farm and forest, diversified with plateaus and escarpments, until it crosses the Appalachian plain and enters the hills again at Easton, Pennsylvania. From this point it is flanked at intervals by fine hills, and in places by cliffs, of which the finest are the Nockamixon Rocks, 3 miles (5 km) long and above 200 feet (61 m) high.

Central Delaware Valley

At Easton, Pennsylvania, the Lehigh River enters the Delaware. At Trenton there is a fall of 8 feet (2.4 m).

The Lower Delaware and Tide-Water

The lower Delaware as viewed from New Castle, Delaware

Below Trenton the river flows between Philadelphia and New Jersey before becoming a broad, sluggish inlet of the sea, with many marshes along its side, widening steadily into its great estuary, Delaware Bay.

The Delaware River constitutes part of the boundary The Delaware-New Jersey border is actually at the easternmost river shoreline within the Twelve-Mile Circle of New Castle, rather than mid-river or mid-channel borders, causing small portions of land lying west of the shoreline, but on the New Jersey side of the river, to fall under the jurisdiction of Delaware. The rest of the borders follow a mid-channel approach.

Tributaries and watershed

The Delaware River's watershed drains an area of 14,119 square miles (36,570 km²) in five U.S. states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

The main tributaries in New York are the Mongaup and Neversink rivers and Callicoon Creek. From Pennsylvania, the major tributaries are the Lackawaxen, Lehigh, and Schuylkill rivers. From New Jersey, the Big Flatbrook, Pequest, Musconetcong, and Maurice rivers, plus Oldmans, Raccoon and Rancocas creeks, flow into the Delaware.

• Appoquinimink River Template:Nb10
• Alloway Creek
• Assiscunk Creek
• Assunpink Creek
• Big Timber Creek
• Blacks Creek
• Brodhead Creek
• Bushkill Creek
• Chester Creek
• Christina River
• Cooper River
• Crafts Creek

• Crosswicks Creek Template:Nb10
• Crum Creek
• Darby Creek
• Equinunk Creek
• Flat Brook
• Frankford Creek
• Lehigh River
• Lockatong Creek
• Mantua Creek
• Marsh Creek
• Martins Creek
• Maurice River

• Musconetcong River Template:Nb10
• Neshaminy Creek
• Neversink River
• Newtown Creek
• Oldmans Creek
• Oquaga Creek
• Paulins Kill
• Pennsauken Creek
• Pennypack Creek
• Pequest River
• Pompess Creek

• Pohatcong Creek
• Poquessing Creek
• Raccoon Creek
• Rancocas Creek
• Ridley Creek
• Salem River
• Schuylkill River
• Shohola Creek
• Tohickon Creek
• Wickecheoke Creek
• Woodbury Creek

History

Benjamin West's painting The Treaty of Penn with the Indians' (1771–1772), depicts the 1683 peace treaty at Shackamaxon between William Penn and Tamanend, the chief of the Lenape's "Turtle Clan." Voltaire referred to it as "the only treaty never sworn to and never broken."

The Delaware River played a key factor in the economic and social development of the Mid-Atlantic region. In the seventeenth century is provided the conduit for colonial settlement by the Dutch (New Netherland), the Swedish (New Sweden). Beginning in 1664, the region became an English possession as settlement by Quakers established the colonies of Pennsylvania (including present-day Delaware) and West Jersey. In the eighteenth century, cities like Philadelphia, Camden (then Cooper's Ferry), Trenton, and Wilmington, New Castle, New Castle were established upon the Delaware and their continued commercial success into the present day has been dependent on access to the river for trade and power. The river provided the path for the settlement of northeastern Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, and northwestern New Jersey by German Palatine immigrants—a population that became key in the agricultural development of the region.

Washington's crossing of the Delaware

Main article: Washington's crossing of the Delaware

George Washington crossing the Delaware River prior to the Battle of Trenton

Perhaps the most famous “Delaware Crossing” involved the improvised boat crossing undertaken by George Washington’s army during the American Revolution on the night of December 25–26, 1776. This led to a successful surprise attack on the Hessian troops occupying Trenton, New Jersey.

Commerce

The magnitude of the commerce of Philadelphia has made the improvements of the river below that port of great importance. Small improvements were attempted by Pennsylvania as early as 1771. Commerce was once important on the upper river, primarily prior to railway competition (1857).

• The Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, running parallel with the river from Easton to Bristol, opened in 1830.
• The Delaware and Raritan Canal, which runs along the New Jersey side of the Delaware River from Bulls Island, New Jersey to Trenton, unites the waters of the Delaware and Raritan rivers as it empties the waters of the Delaware River via the canal outlet in New Brunswick. This canal water conduit is still used as a water supply source by the State of New Jersey.
• The Morris Canal (now abandoned and almost completely filled in) and the Delaware and Hudson Canal connected the Delaware and Hudson rivers.
• The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal joins the waters of the Delaware with those of the Chesapeake Bay.

In the "project of 1885" the U.S. government undertook systematically the formation of a 26-foot (7.9 m) channel 600 feet (180 m) wide from Philadelphia to deep water in Delaware Bay. The River and Harbor Act of 1899 provided for a 30-foot (9.1 m) channel 600 feet (180 m) wide from Philadelphia to the deep water of the bay.

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

See also: Tocks Island Dam Controversy

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area came about as a result of the failure of a controversial plan to build a dam on the Delaware River at Tocks Island, just north of the Delaware Water Gap to control water levels for flood control and hydroelectric power generation. The dam would have created a 37-mile (60 km) lake in the center of present park for use as a reservoir. Starting in 1960, the present day area of the Recreation Area was acquired for the Army Corps of Engineers through eminent domain. Between 3,000 and 5,000 dwellings were demolished, including historical sites, and about 15,000 people were displaced by the project.

Because of massive environmental opposition, dwindling funds, and an unacceptable geological assessment of the dam's safety, the government transferred the property to the National Park Service in 1978. The National Park Service found itself as the caretaker of the previously endangered territory, and with the help of the federal government and surrounding communities, developed recreational facilities and worked to preserve the remaining historical structures.

Transportation

Bridge crossings

The Delaware River at Camden, NJ looking toward Philadelphia

Main article: List of crossings of the Delaware River

The Delaware River is a major barrier to travel between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Most of the larger bridges are tolled only westbound, and are owned by the Delaware River and Bay Authority, Delaware River Port Authority, Burlington County Bridge Commission or Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.

Environmental issues

New York City water supply

Main article: New York City water supply system

After New York City had built 15 reservoirs to supply water to the city's growing population, it was unable to obtain permission to build an additional five reservoirs along the Delaware River's tributaries. As a result, in 1928 the city decided to draw water from the Delaware River, putting then in direct conflict with villages and towns across the river in Pennsylvania which were already using the Delaware for their water supply. The two sides eventually took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1931, New York City was allowed to draw 440 million US gallons (1,700,000 m³) of water a day from the Delaware and its upstream tributaries.

Flooding

With the failure of the dam project to come to fruition, the lack of flood control on the river left it vulnerable, and it has experienced a number of serious flooding events as the result of snow melt or rain run-off from heavy rainstorms. Record flooding occurred in August 1955, in the aftermath of the passing of the remnants of two separate hurricanes over the area within less than a week: first Hurricane Connie and then Hurricane Diane, which was, and still is, the wettest tropical cyclone to have hit the northeastern United States. The river gauge at Riegelsville, Pennsylvania recorded an all time record crest of 38.85 feet (11.84 m) on August 19, 1955.

More recently, moderate to severe flooding has occurred along the river. The same gauge at Riegelsville recorded a peak of 30.95 feet (9.43 m) on September 23, 2004, 34.07 feet (10.38 m) on April 4, 2005, and 33.62 feet (10.25 m) on June 28, 2006, all considerably higher than the flood stage of 22 feet (6.7 m).

Since the upper Delaware basin has few population centers along its banks, flooding in this area mainly affects natural unpopulated flood plains. Residents in the middle part of the Delaware basin experience flooding, including three major floods in the three years (2004–2006) that have severely damaged their homes and land. The lower part of the Delaware basin from Philadelphia southward to the Delaware Bay is tidal and much wider than portions further north, and is not prone to river related flooding (although tidal surges can cause minor flooding in this area).

The Delaware River Basin Commission, along with local governments, is working to try to address the issue of flooding along the river. As the past few years have seen a rise in catastrophic floods, most residents of the river basin feel that something must be done. The local governments have worked in association with FEMA to address many of these problems, however, due to insufficient federal funds, progress is slow.

Major oil spills

A number of oil spills have taken place in the Delaware over the years.

• 01-31-1975 — around 11,172,000 US gallons (42,290 m³) of crude oil spilled from the Corinthos tanker
• 09-28-1985 — 435,000 US gallons (1,650 m³) of crude oil spilled from the Grand Eagle tanker after running aground on Marcus Hook Bar
• 06-24-1989 — 306,000 US gallons (1,160 m³) of crude oil spilled from the Presidente Rivera tanker after running aground on Claymont Shoal
• 11-26-2004 — 265,000 US gallons (1,000 m³) of crude oil spilled from the Athos 1 tanker; the tanker's hull had been punctured by a submerged, discarded anchor

See also

• Foul Rift, rapids just south of Belvidere, New Jersey
• Geography of Pennsylvania
• List of crossings of the Delaware River
• List of Delaware rivers
• List of New Jersey rivers
• List of New York rivers
• List of Pennsylvania rivers
• Partnership for the Delaware Estuary
• Tocks Island
• Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River
• Washington Crossing (disambiguation)

A 1655 Swedish nautical chart showing part of the Delaware River, from when the river was part of the Swedish colony New Sweden

References

Notes

Bibliography

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Delaware River". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Devastation on the Delaware: Stories and Images of the Deadly Flood of 1955 (2005, Word Forge Books, Ferndale, PA) The only comprehensive documentary of this weather disaster in the Delaware River Valley.

External links

• Delaware Riverkeeper Network
• National Park Service: Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area
• National Park Service: Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River
• National Park Service: Lower Delaware Wild & Scenic River
• U.S. Geological Survey: NJ stream gaging stations
• U.S. Geological Survey: NY stream gaging stations
• U.S. Geological Survey: PA stream gaging stations

Historical content

• Marine Railway and Sectional Floating Dry Dock, Delaware River, Philadelphia, 1893 by D.J. Kennedy, Historical Society of Pennsylvania
• Winter on the River Delaware, 1856. Shows "U.S.S. Prowhatan" by D.J. Kennedy, HSP
• "Map of the South River in New Netherland" from ca. 1639 via the World Digital Library

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