Brandywine Creek (also called the Brandywine River) is a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...

of the Christina River in southeastern

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and northern

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. The Lower Brandywine (the main stem) is longU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed April 1, 2011 and is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River with several tributary streams. The East Branch and West Branch of the creek originate within 2 miles (3 km) of each other on the slopes of Welsh Mountain in Honey Brook Township, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of their confluence. The mouth of the creek on the Christina River in present-day

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington (Unami language, Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish colonization of the Americas, Swedish settlement in North ...

, is the site of the

New Sweden New Sweden ( sv, Nya Sverige) was a Swedish colony along the lower reaches of the Delaware River in what is now the United States from 1638 to 1655, established during the Thirty Years' War when Sweden was a great military power. New Sweden f ...

colony, where colonists first landed on March 29, 1638. The

Battle of Brandywine The Battle of Brandywine, also known as the Battle of Brandywine Creek, was fought between the American Continental Army of General George Washington and the British Army of General William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe, Sir William Howe on September& ...

was fought around the creek near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 1777, during the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

. Water-powered

gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separat ...

s in Brandywine Village, near the creek mouth, and the nearby DuPont gunpowder mill were important in developing American industry before the introduction of steam power.

Course

The headwaters of both the East Branch and West Branch of Brandywine Creek are in western

Chester County, Pennsylvania Chester County (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Tscheschter Kaundi''), colloquially known as Chesco, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in the Delaware Valley region of the state. As of the 2020 census, the population was 53 ...

, near Honey Brook. The East Branch and West Branch flow southeast for and , respectively, to their confluence about southeast of Coatesville, between East Bradford Township and Pocopson Township. The combined drainage of the East Branch and West Branch, downstream of the confluence, is defined as Brandywine Creek and continues to flow southeast through Chester County, past

Chadds Ford Chadds Ford is a census-designated place (CDP) in Delaware and Chester counties, Pennsylvania, United States, comprising the unincorporated communities of Chadds Ford and Chadds Ford Knoll. It was first listed as a CDP prior to the 2020 censu ...

Delaware County, Pennsylvania Delaware County, colloquially referred to as Delco, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. With a population of 576,830 as of the 2020 census, it is the fifth-most populous county in Pennsylvania and the third=smallest in area. Del ...

then enters the state of

about north of Wilmington. The creek continues south through

First State National Historical Park First State National Historical Park is a National Park Service unit which lies primarily in the state of Delaware but which extends partly into Pennsylvania in Chadds Ford. Initially created as First State National Monument by President Barack O ...

and Brandywine Creek State Park, into Wilmington, where it flows through

Brandywine Park Brandywine Park was the first city park established by the city of Wilmington, Delaware. It is located on the banks of Brandywine Creek (Christina River), Brandywine Creek, between Augustine Road and North Market Street. The park was established ...

near the city center. Brandywine Creek joins the Christina River east of downtown Wilmington and about upstream from the mouth of the Christina, which also includes flows from the White Clay Creek and Red Clay Creek basins, and finally discharges into the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, before ...

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

. The confluence of the Christina and Delaware rivers is the approximate dividing point between the freshwater Delaware River and the saltwater

Delaware Bay Delaware Bay is the estuary outlet of the Delaware River on the northeast seaboard of the United States. It is approximately in area, the bay's freshwater mixes for many miles with the saltwater of the Atlantic Ocean. The bay is bordered inland ...

. In Pennsylvania, Chadds Ford, Elam, Downingtown, Unionville, and parts of West Chester, are all in the Brandywine Valley, as well as the Delaware towns of Centreville, Greenville,

Montchanin Montchanin () is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France. See also *Communes of the Saône-et-Loire department The following is a list of the 565 communes of the Saône-et-Loir ...

, Hockessin, and Yorklyn. Nearby Avondale (in the White Clay Creek basin) and

Kennett Square, Pennsylvania Kennett Square is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is known as the Mushroom Capital of the World because mushroom farming in the region produces over 500 million pounds of mushrooms a year, totaling half of the United ...

(in the Red Clay Creek basin) are often considered part of the Brandywine Valley. File:Smith's Bridge-November 2015.JPG, Smith's Bridge over the Brandywine Creek. File:Brandywine Creek at Chadds Ford.jpg, alt=Photo of wide tree-lined Brandywine Creek, Brandywine Creek looking upstream from the Brandywine River Museum at Chadds Ford File:Brandywinecreek.jpg, Brandywine Creek in Brandywine Park near downtown Wilmington in February 2007, looking downstream toward Washington Street Bridge File:BwineCanoe2.JPG, Canoeing near Pocopson

History

Native Americans of the Algonquian-speaking

Lenape The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory inclu ...

(or Delaware) Nation lived in the area between the Hudson River Valley and southern Delaware before the European settlement. They lived by hunting, farming corn, beans, and squash, and by fishing. The Brandywine had an especially rich

shad The Alosinae, or the shads,Alosinae
The first European settlement on the Brandywine was Swedish. On March 29, 1638, Peter Minuit, who had earlier explored the area for the Dutch, founded the colony of

near the confluence of the Christina and Brandywine, at

Fort Christina Fort Christina (also called Fort Altena) was the first Swedish settlement in North America and the principal settlement of the New Sweden colony. Built in 1638 and named after Queen Christina of Sweden, it was located approximately 1 mi (1. ...

, in present-day Wilmington. About 600 Swedes, Finns, and Dutch settled in New Sweden. They tended to settle along the Delaware River rather than move inland along the Brandywine and are credited with introducing the

log cabin A log cabin is a small log house, especially a less finished or less architecturally sophisticated structure. Log cabins have an ancient history in Europe, and in America are often associated with first generation home building by settlers. Eur ...

into America. They called the creek Fiskiekylen, or "Fish Creek", and the Dutch heritage is also reflected in Fiske Creek and variant names using the Dutch word "Kill" or stream, Bainwend Kill, Brandewyn Kill, and Brandywine Kill. The creek’s current name may be from an old Dutch word for

brandy Brandy is a liquor produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume (70–120 US proof) and is typically consumed as an after-dinner digestif. Some brandies are aged in wooden casks. Others are coloured with ...

or gin, brandewijn, or from the Swedish word brännvin (swedish vodka). During the colonisation of the Swedes the creek was called brännvins kilen. It has been asserted that in 1655, a Dutch vessel carrying brandy, wintered in the stream and was sunk due to ice accumulation. The name might also derive from an early mill owner, Andreas Brainwende or Brantwyn. A 1681 map labels the creek ''Brande wine Cr.''

Thomas Holme Thomas Holme (1624–1695) was the first Surveyor General of Pennsylvania. He laid out the first and original plan for the city of Philadelphia. Holme was one of the Valiant Sixty, a group of early leaders and activists in the Religious Societ ...

's 1687 map of Pennsylvania gives the name as simply ''Brandy Wine'' and shows it flowing into ''Christian Creek'' and then the ''Delaware River''. The Swedes, Dutch and English disputed possession of the area until 1674, when the English gained control.

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...

was granted a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681 and gained control over the "lower three counties," as Delaware was then known, soon thereafter. The population of New Sweden had only reached about 1,000, on the western shore of the Delaware, by the time of Penn's arrival. By 1687, a Swedish colonist, Tyman Stidham, opened the first mill on the Brandywine, near Wilmington. Holme's 1687 map shows only five land claims along the Brandywine, all near present-day Chadds Ford. Land claims of the earlier Swedish and Dutch colonists were not noted on this map. While the Lenape still remained along the Brandywine, they had by this time been decimated by European diseases and wars with

Susquehannock The Susquehannock people, also called the Conestoga by some English settlers or Andastes were Iroquoian Native Americans who lived in areas adjacent to the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, ranging from its upper reaches in the southern pa ...

and later

Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

tribes over control of the

fur trade The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal ecosystem, boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals h ...

with Europeans. Their estimated population had fallen from 10,000–20,000 in 1600 to 2,000 in 1682. The Lenape signed a series of treaties with the Europeans, beginning with a 1682 treaty with William Penn, but were forced out of eastern Pennsylvania by the time of the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the st ...

. During the 1720s and 1730s, the Lenape claimed that William Penn had granted them all the land 1 mile on each side of the creek, and complained that mill dams on the creek were ruining their shad fishery.

Hannah Freeman Hannah Freeman (March 1731 – March 20, 1802), also known as "Indian Hannah," was a Lenape healer, artisan, and farmer who historically was thought to be the last surviving member of the Lenape in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Biography Fr ...

(1730–1802), believed to be the last Lenape to have lived in Chester County, is buried in Embreeville, near the forks of the creek. The valley was settled by

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

s, and other dissident Protestants, following Penn’s Charter. Their activities were mainly farming and milling. Quaker influence is still felt with over 16 Quaker Meetings and several Quaker schools operating in the area. The Quaker millers near the mouth of the Brandywine cooperated in maintaining quality and branding the flour. "Brandywine Superfine" flour was shipped all along the Atlantic coast and to the West Indies even before the American Revolution. A base point for surveying the Mason-Dixon line, known as the Stargazers’ Stone, was established in Embreeville west of Philadelphia and north of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border by Charles Mason and

Jeremiah Dixon Jeremiah Dixon FRS (27 July 1733 – 22 January 1779) was an English surveyor and astronomer who is best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason–Dixon line. Early life and ...

in 1764. They used the adjoining John Harlan house as their center of operations until 1768. The creek lends its name to the 1777

of the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

. General William Howe, commanding the British forces, was marching north on

Baltimore Pike The Baltimore Pike was an auto trail connecting Baltimore, Maryland, with Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Today, parts of the road are signed as U.S. Route 1 (US 1), US 13, and a small portion of Pennsylvania Route 41 (PA 41). A section of the ro ...

(now U.S. Route 1) toward

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

and needed to ford the Brandywine near Chadds Ford. General

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

, massed most of his American forces on the banks of the creek near Chadds Ford, and protected other fords as far as north and south. The Brandywine Battlefield Park covers only , but during the battle British troops marched about north, fording the creek above the forks, to outflank Washington's forces. Before the battle, General

Anthony Wayne Anthony Wayne (January 1, 1745 – December 15, 1796) was an American soldier, officer, statesman, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He adopted a military career at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, where his mil ...

had his headquarters in Brandywine Village, across the creek from Wilmington, and Continental troops camped nearby, near Lovering Avenue. The poet

Bayard Taylor Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825December 19, 1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, travel author, and diplomat. As a poet, he was very popular, with a crowd of more than 4,000 attending a poetry reading once, which was a record ...

wrote of the battle and the creek: And once thy peaceful tide Was filled with life-blood from bold hearts and brave; and heroes on thy verdant margin died, The land they loved, to save. These vales, so calm and still, Once saw the foeman's charge,—the bayonet's gleam; And heard the thunders roll from hill to hill From morn till sunset's beam. Early paper mills were located along the creek, during the Revolution. They supplied

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading int ...

's print shop and also supplied the paper to print

Continental currency Early American currency went through several stages of development during the colonial and post-Revolutionary history of the United States. John Hull was authorized by the Massachusetts legislature to make the earliest coinage of the colony (th ...

and the

Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...

. The Conestoga wagon was first built to haul grain from the Conestoga Valley to Brandywine flour mills. A group of painters, including

N. C. Wyeth Newell Convers Wyeth (October 22, 1882 – October 19, 1945), known as N. C. Wyeth, was an American painter and illustrator. He was the pupil of Howard Pyle and became one of America's most well-known illustrators. Wyeth created more than 3,000 ...

Andrew Wyeth Andrew Newell Wyeth ( ; July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was an American visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century. In his ...

, Jamie Wyeth and

Howard Pyle Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy. In 1894, he began ...

, are 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 The Brandywine Museum of Art is a museum of regional and American art located on U.S. Route 1 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania on the banks of the Brandywine Creek. The museum showcases the work of Andrew Wyeth, a major American realist painter, an ...

in Chadds Ford.

Brandywine Village and early industrialization

The Brandywine crosses the

Fall Line A fall line (or fall zone) is the area where an upland region and a coastal plain meet and is typically prominent where rivers cross it, with resulting rapids or waterfalls. The uplands are relatively hard crystalline basement rock, and the coa ...

just north of Wilmington. The elevation falls from about above sea level in Chadds Ford, to just a few feet above sea level in Wilmington. The steep descent powered many early industrial activities, including flour milling and the original

DuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

gunpowder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, carbon (in the form of charcoal) and potassium nitrate (saltpeter). T ...

mills, while the navigable channel to the

and

allowed manufacturers to load ocean-going ships from near their mills. By 1687, a Swedish colonist, Tyman Stidham opened the first mill on the Brandywine, near Wilmington. About 1735, Brandywine Village was founded across the creek from Wilmington.

s Elizabeth Levis Shipley, her husband William Shipley, and Thomas Canby were important in establishing the village and its supporting flour mills. By 1743, a dam and a millrace south of the creek had been built. In 1760, a bridge was built at the current site of the Market Street Bridge, and the north race and two more flour mills were built by

Joseph Tatnall Joseph Tatnall (1740–1813) was an American businessman, who was a prominent Quaker merchant, miller, and banker in Wilmington, Delaware. Early life The only son of Edward and Elizabeth (Pennock) Tatnall, Joseph was born in Wilmington on November ...

. Oliver Evans in the 1780s helped local mills increase their efficiency, ushering in the

industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. The first

paper mill A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt ...

in Delaware, Gilpin's mill in north Wilmington, opened in 1787. This site was later used by one of the largest textile mills in the world,

Bancroft Mills Bancroft Mills is an abandoned mill complex along Brandywine Creek in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. It has been the site of some of the earliest and most famous mills near Wilmington and was the largest and longest running complex along ...

, which is now closed. In 1796, the village contained 12 mills that could grind 400,000 bushels of grain per year. By 1806, there were "about fifty or sixty snug brick, stone, and frame houses" in the village. In 1795,

Jacob Broom Jacob Broom (October 17, 1752 – April 25, 1810) was an American Founding Father, businessman, and politician from Wilmington, Delaware. As a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, he was a signer of the United States Constitu ...

built the first cotton mill on the Brandywine, a few miles north of the village, but it burned down two years later. In 1802, Broom sold the site, complete with a working dam and millrace, to Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, who paid $6,740 for the .Kinnane, Adrian (2002). ''DuPont: From the Banks of the Brandywine to Miracles of Science''. Wilmington: E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Gunpowder mills, known as the

Eleutherian Mills From 1802 to 1921, Eleutherian Mills was a gunpowder mill site used for the manufacture of explosives founded by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, which grew into the DuPont company. The name also refers to the house on the hill above the mills, whi ...

, operated on the site from 1802, and by 1810, the site was the largest gunpowder producer in the country. During the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...

alone, over 4 million barrels of gunpowder were produced here. The mills, which operated until 1921, are now part of the

Hagley Museum and Library The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...

. By 1815, several toll roads connected the village with Pennsylvania's grain-growing regions, including the Lancaster, Kennett and Concord Pikes. These roads later became Delaware Route 41, Delaware Route 52, and parts of US 202 combined with Delaware Route 202. The millers cooperated in maintaining quality and branding the flour. "Brandywine Superfine" flour was shipped all along the Atlantic coast and to the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

before the American Revolution. A

mill race A mill race, millrace or millrun, mill lade (Scotland) or mill leat (Southwest England) is the current of water that turns a water wheel, or the channel ( sluice) conducting water to or from a water wheel. Compared with the broad waters of a m ...

once used to provide water power is still in working condition in Brandywine Park, designed in the 1890s by

Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co- ...

, near downtown Wilmington. To the north, Downingtown on the east branch was originally known as Milltown. Its first building, the Downingtown Log House, was built about 1700 where the road between Philadelphia and Lancaster, later known as the Lancaster Pike, crossed the east branch. Thomas Moore built a grist mill in 1716 and Roger Hunt built another in 1739, which operated through at least 1908. Both the Downingtown Log House and the Roger Hunt Mill still stand today. Milltown was the halfway point on the journey between Philadelphia and Lancaster, so several inns served travelers, including the Ship Inn (c. 1730), the King-in-Armes or Washington Inn (1761), the Half-Way House (1790), and the Swan Hotel (1800). In the 1880s, Downingtown became known for its paper mills. Coatesville on the west branch became famous for producing iron goods as early as 1810, and later, rolling steel plate. Lukens Steel Company has dominated the economy of the town since 1810; today, Cleveland Cliffs continues to make steel there. File:Oliver Evans - Automated mill.jpg, Oliver Evans's design for automated flour milling File:BrandywineAcadHABS1934.jpg, The Brandywine Academy building File:Gilpins Mill.jpg, "Gilpin's Mill on the Brandywine" attributed to Thomas Doughty c. 1827. File:BrandywineFlour Mills1840.jpg, Brandywine flour mills about 1840, painted by

Bass Otis Bass Otis (July 17, 1784 - November 3, 1861), was an early American artist, inventor, and portrait painter. He painted hundreds of portraits including many of the best known Americans of his day, and produced the first American lithograph in 181 ...

. The north bank (to the right) is Brandywine Village.

Historic preservation

These places near the Brandywine are on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. File:BrandywinePostcardPreWW1.jpg, About 1905, looking downstream toward Van Buren Street Bridge, Wilmington. Note the mill race on the right. File:Brandywine Creek Wilmington.jpg, Brandywine Creek in Wilmington in 2006 File:Lea1901MktBVHABs.jpg, William Lea house in Brandywine Village File:BVillage1906.jpg, Brandywine Village from the Market Street Bridge from a postcard dated 1906. File:North Market St Bridge Wilmington.JPG, Market Street Bridge, looking downstream, with Brandywine Village on the left, and the Wilmington Pumping Station on the right. The bridge marks the approximate high level of tidewater on the Brandywine. File:1905DuPontGunpowderMill.jpg,

gunpowder mills on the Brandywine, on a postcard dated 1905. These mills were still working at the time. Note the handwritten "These blow up occasionally, and then?" File:SMITH'S COVERED BRIDGE, NEW CASTLE COUNTY, DELAWARE.jpg, Smith's Covered Bridge

Ecology

The first of eight dams on Brandywine Creek was removed in 2019, enabling

American shad The American shad (''Alosa sapidissima'') is a species of anadromous clupeid fish naturally distributed on the North American coast of the North Atlantic, from Newfoundland to Florida, and as an introduced species on the North Pacific coast. Th ...

(''Alosa sapidissima'') to migrate further up the river. The dams block passage to shad spawning runs which cannot access the Pennsylvania reaches of the river. The plan to remove all 8 dams is known as "Brandywine Shad 2020" and has been led by Professor Jerry Kauffman of the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...

Water Resources Center.

References

External links

U.S. Geological Survey: PA Continuous Streamflow Gaging Stations

Brandywine Conservancy

Brandywine Valley Association

11 ''LIFE'' Photographs
by

Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from ...

of the DuPont gunpowder mills, 1957
Pennsylvania Scenic Rivers website

The Historic Christina Basin

Historic images of the Brandywine
from the

Hagley Digital Archives The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Pon ...

Delaware's Industrial Brandywine

Brandywine Shad 2020 web page at the University of Delaware Water Resources Center
{{Authority control Protected areas of Chester County, Pennsylvania Protected areas of Delaware County, Pennsylvania Protected areas of New Castle County, Delaware Rivers of Chester County, Pennsylvania Rivers of Delaware County, Pennsylvania Rivers of Delaware Rivers of New Castle County, Delaware Rivers of Pennsylvania Scenic Rivers of Pennsylvania Tributaries of the Christina River Wilmington, Delaware