The New International Encyclopædia/Delaware (river)

DELAWARE. A river of the Eastern United States, which rises on the western slopes of the Catskill Mountains (q.v.) in southeastern New York (Map: New Jersey, C 1). It flows in a southwest course to Deposit, a distance of about 100 miles. Here it turns sharply to the southeast and soon forms the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, receiving at Hancock the waters of the eastern branch, which also rises in the Catskills. At Port Jervis, N. Y., where it becomes the boundary between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, it turns to the southwest and flows in that course to Delaware Water Gap (q.v.), thence generally southward to Easton, Pa., thence southeast to a point just below Trenton, thence southwest again past Philadelphia and Chester, Pa., where it begins to broaden into an estuary, which gradually widens into Delaware Bay. In its lower course it separates New Jersey from Delaware. Its length is 410 miles and it drains an area of 12,012 square miles, of which one-fourth is in New York, over one-half in Pennsylvania, and about one-fifth in New Jersey. Its mean discharge at Lambertville has been estimated at 18,000 cubic feet per second. It has a considerable fall and furnishes extensive power at Trenton, where it crosses the Fall Line (10 to 15 feet fall), at Lambertville (Welles's Falls, 14 feet), at Belvidere (Foul Rift, 23 feet), and at Port Jervis (30 feet). Its chief tributaries are the Schuylkill (q.v.) and the Lehigh (q.v.), both from the west. It is navigable for large ships to Philadelphia and for steamboats to the head of tidewater at Trenton. It is seldom that navigation is closed by ice below Philadelphia. A canal parallels the left bank of the river from Easton, Pa., to Morrisville (opposite Trenton), and then cuts across a bend to Bristol. A canal also connects Trenton with New Brunswick (on the Raritan River), and another crosses New Jersey from near Phillipsburg to Jersey City on the Hudson River. A fourth canal parallels the Lehigh River and connects Mauch Chunk with Easton, while a fifth parallels the Lackawaxen River from Honesdale, Pa., to Lackawaxen on the Delaware, and parallels the Delaware to Port Jervis.