Delaware River

Delaware River above the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania

Catchment area of the Delaware River

East Branch Delaware River at Margaretville

Hamden Covered Bridge

The Delaware River is 595 kilometers long one of the larger rivers in the eastern United States.

Geography

Its two sources, the East Branch Delaware River ( also Popacton River ) and the West Branch Delaware River, arise in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. After their union to the Delaware River this then forms the border between the states of New York and Pennsylvania as well as in the further course between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where he flows past the city of Philadelphia. Finally, it flows into the lying between the State of Delaware and New Jersey Delaware Bay into the Atlantic.

The basin of the Delaware comprises about 30,000 km ². The ocean current penetrates the Delaware up far, so that it is accessible to larger ships to Philadelphia. Main tributaries of the Lehigh River and the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania. The Delaware -Hudson and the Morris -Essex- channel connecting the Delaware River with the Hudson River, the Union and Schuylkill Canal with the Susquehanna. In Bordentown existed from 1834 to 1932 a navigable link on the Raritan and Delaware Canal to New Brunswick (New Jersey) on the Raritan River.

Three main sections of the Delaware River are protected as a National Wild and Scenic River. In Pennsylvania, the river, the Delaware Water Gap, a gap through flows. Here is the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

Name

The river was by Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, the second governor of the British colony of Virginia, and was named in the 17th century home of the Lenni Lenape, which in turn were named after the Delaware River. The English in Maryland used the names Delaware Bay Indians and Delaware Indians, although this name in Pennsylvania only became common, as these Indians had already moved away from the Delaware River to the west.

History

On the night of 25th to December 26th, 1776, General George Washington crossed during the American Revolutionary War with his army the river in a surprising maneuver toward Trenton (New Jersey), to attack the stationed there Hessian regiments of the British Army. The majority of the British Army was in his winter quarters and the attack of the Americans the next day came as such a surprise that the Hessians suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Trenton. The victory boosted the morale of the American troops much that had previously been found already in a pretty desperate state.