Brandywine Creek
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brandywine Creek (also called the Brandywine River) is a tributary of the Christina River (also called the Christiana River), approximately 20 mi (32 km) long, in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware in the United States.
It rises in western Chester County, Pennsylvania, with two branches joining about 10 mi (16 km) south of Coatesville. The combined stream flows southeast through Chester County, past Chadds Ford, where it enters northern Delaware about 5 mi (8 km) north of Wilmington. It flows south into Wilmington, through Brandywine Creek State Park [1]. It joins the Christina 1 mi (1.6 km) east of downtown Wilmington and approximately 2 mi (3 km) upstream from the mouth of the Christina on the Delaware River. The mouth of the Christina is on the Delaware River estuary and is the approximate dividing point between the freshwater Delaware River and the saltwater Delaware Bay. The Lower Brandywine (including a number of smaller tributary streams) is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River.
[edit] History
The confluence of the Christina and Brandywine is the site of the founding of Fort Christina, the first settlement of the New Sweden colony, in 1638.
The Brandywine was called Wauwaset by Lenni-Lenape (or Delaware) Indians and Fiskiekylen, or "Fish Creek" by early Dutch and Swedish settlers. The current name may be from an old Dutch word for brandy or gin, or from the name of an early English settler, Andrew Braindwine.
The creek lends its name to the 1777 Battle of Brandywine of the American Revolutionary War. The battle site in southeastern Pennsylvania is approximately 2 mi (3 km) east of the river near Chadds Ford.
A group of painters, including N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth and Howard Pyle, are sometimes informally referred to as the "Brandywine school" especially for their landscape works which depict the Brandywine valley. Many of their works are on view at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford.
The Brandywine crosses the fall line just north of Wilmington. The elevation falls from about 200 feet above sea level in Chadds Ford, to just a few feet above sea level in Wilmington. The steep descent provided waterpower to many early industrial activities, including flour milling and the original DuPont gunpowder mills. The nearness of the fall line along the Brandywine to the Delaware river and Delaware Bay, allowed manufacturers to use high powered machinery before the use of the steam engine, and to load ocean-going ships from the same location. Wilmington milled flour was shipped all along the Atlantic coast and to the West Indies before the American Revolution.
The DuPont powder mills may be viewed at the Hagley Museum and Library. A mill race once used to provide water power is still in working condition in Brandywine Creek State Park.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Channel 6 Action News report on Canoeing along Brandywine Creek
- Chadds Ford History
- Art by unknown artist, attributed to Thomas Doughty, 1793-1856), Gilpin's Mill on the Brandywine
- Lower Brandywine Scenic River Corridor
- Scenic Corridor and tributary streams
