Delaware River
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The Delaware River is a river on the Atlantic coast of the United States.
It meets tide-water at Trenton, New Jersey. Its total length, from the head of the longest branch to the capes, is 410 miles (660 km), and above the head of the bay its length is 360 miles (579 km).
It constitutes in part the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, the boundary between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and, for a few miles, the boundary between Delaware and New Jersey.
The main, west or Mohawk branch rises in Schoharie county, N.Y., about 1886 feet (575 m) above the sea, and flows tortuously through the plateau in a deep trough until it emerges from the Catskills. Other branches rise in Greene and Delaware counties.
In the upper portion of its course the varied scenery of its hilly and wooded banks is exquisitely beautiful. After leaving the mountains and plateau, the river flows down broad Appalachian valleys, skirts the Kittatinny range, which it crosses at the Delaware Water Gap, between nearly vertical walls of sandstone, and 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, Pa. From this point it is flanked at intervals by fine hills, and in places by cliffs, of which the finest are the Hockamixon Rocks, 3 miles (5 km) long and above 200 feet (60 m) high.
At Trenton there is a fall of 8 feet (2.4 m). Below Trenton the river becomes a broad, sluggish inlet of the sea, with many marshes along its side, widening steadily into its great estuary, Delaware Bay.
Its main tributaries in New York are Mongaup and Neversink rivers and Callicoon Creek; from Pennsylvania, Lackawaxen, Lehigh, and Schuylkill rivers; and from New Jersey, Rancocas Creek and Musconetcong and Maurice rivers. Oldmans and Raccoon creeks are tributaries in New Jersey.
Commerce was once important on the upper river, but only before the beginning of railway competition (1857). The Delaware division of the Pennsylvania Canal, running parallel with the river from Easton to Bristol, was opened in 1830. A canal from Trenton to New Brunswick, called the Delaware & Raritan Canal, unites the waters of the Delaware and Raritan rivers; the Morris and the Delaware and Hudson canals connect the Delaware and Hudson rivers; and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal joins the waters of the Delaware with those of the Chesapeake Bay.
The mean tides below Philadelphia are about 6 feet. 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.
In the “project of 1885“ the United States government undertook systematically the formation of a 26 ft (8 m) channel 600 ft (180 m) wide from Philadelphia to deep water in Delaware Bay. The River and Harbor Act of 1899 provided for a 30 foot (9 m) channel 600 feet (180 m) wide from Philadelphia to the deep water of the bay.
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Crossings
These crossings exist from south to north:- Cape May-Lewes Ferry (US 9 across Delaware Bay)
- Delaware Memorial Bridge (I-295/US 40)
- Commodore Barry Bridge (US 322)
- Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76)
- Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676/US 30 and PATCO Speedline)
- Delair Bridge (New Jersey Transit Atlantic City Line and Conrail Trenton Line)
- Betsy Ross Bridge (NJ 90)
- Tacony-Palmyra Bridge (NJ 73/PA 73)
- Burlington-Bristol Bridge (NJ 413/PA 413)
- Delaware River-Turnpike Toll Bridge (I-95/I-276)
- Amtrak Northeast Corridor
- Trenton-Morrisville Toll Bridge (US 1)
- Lower Trenton Bridge (ALT US 1)
- Calhoun Street Bridge
- CSX/SEPTA R3-West Trenton line
- Scudder Falls Bridge (I-95)
- Washington Crossing Bridge (CR 546/PA 532)
- New Hope-Lambertville Bridge (NJ 179/PA 179)
- New Hope-Lambertville Toll Bridge (US 202)
- Centre Bridge-Stockton Bridge (CR 523/PA 263)
- Lumberville-Raven Rock Bridge (pedestrian)
- Uhlerstown-Frenchtown Bridge (NJ 12)
- Upper Black Eddy-Milford Bridge
- Riegelsville Bridge
- Interstate 78 Toll Bridge (I-78)
- Norfolk Southern Lehigh Line
- Northampton Street Bridge
- Easton-Phillipsburg Toll Bridge (US 22)
- Martins Creek Branch (abandoned? railroad)
- Roxburg Branch (abandoned? railroad)
- Riverton-Belvidere Bridge
- Norfolk Southern?
- Portland-Columbia Toll Bridge
- Portland-Columbia Pedestrian Bridge
- Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad New Jersey Cutoff (abandoned)
- Delaware Water Gap Toll Bridge (I-80)
- Dingmans Ferry Bridge (CR 560/PA 739)
- Milford-Montague Toll Bridge (US 206)