What is a River? people on top of Mt Tammany
Looking west over the Delaware Water Gap toward PA from Mt Tammany
Braided streams in a rock outcrop on the trail
Tag: Delaware River
The other day I was biking on the Delaware Canal and I passed by the Delaware Canal state park office. To my surprise I found the kayaks that we used on our trip! I just thought it was cool to see them again.
Today we traveled to the water treatment plant. I found it really interesting that the gates there used the same type of mechanism as the locks on the Delaware canal (as shown above). I guess if it works well there’s no reason to use any different system.
This is the fish ladder between the Delaware River and the Lehigh River. It is near Easton around the start of the Delaware canal. The dam that is on the Lehigh blocks the path of migration for fish. This forcing of them to spawn elsewhere reduces the survival rate for eggs and newborn fish. In order to help this problem people build fish ladders to help fish follow their regular migration pack.
The ladder in Easton has a clear window to view the fish climbing the ladder. Unfortunately this specific ladder doesn’t have a good reputation of working very well.
One of the local country clubs, Riverview Country Club, lies alongside the Delaware River. As the name suggests, the course feature various views of the Delaware in addition to various water hazards that derive from the Delaware. While the Delaware River doesn’t serve as a direct hazard for golfers on the course, it contributes to an incredibly pleasant atmosphere.
I found this rock by the Delaware river on a hike for Geology 100. There is a line in the rock that almost looks like it’s splitting apart. This line is called a tension gash and is filled with crystal. This small rock gives us hints into the history of the Delaware river millions of years ago. Once there was no river here, instead it was a mountain or large hill. Seismic activity occurred, causing cracks to form in the rock. The water got into the cracks and over a very long time of freezing, thus expanding, and thawing the crack got wider and wider until the river busted this mountain open. The line on this rock shows the same type of seismic activity that occurred all of those years ago. I’ll talk more about it in my GORP next Tuesday.
While walking through downtown Easton last week, I took this picture of the Easton Dam. It is where the Lehigh River meets the Delaware. In 2017, some people wanted to remove the dam to make the area of downtown Easton an area for white water rafting, fishing, and other recreational activities. Being from New Jersey, it is interesting to me that a lot of the water we get there comes from the Delaware.
I have been to Cape May, NJ many times where the Delaware Bay opens to the Atlantic, but I had never been all the way to the top of our Delaware River watershed. This summer I was in Oneonta NY to visit Hartwick College and I took the opportunity to find a small tributary stream in the headwaters. This is what it looked like.
After I made the coffee this morning I noticed the sky in the east starting to look pretty interesting so I went down to the bridge about a 1/2 mile from home and just sat for a while drinking it in (my coffee and the scene in front of me). As Thoreau wrote in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers at this very time of year, “he who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly dispair.”
Welcome river rats! This is where we will be posting our photo-essay materials.
Here is an early morning shot of the confluence of the Lehigh River (coming from the right) with the Delaware River less than a mile from campus. My commute from home takes me along the Delaware River and past this scene every day, and the mist coming off the water in front of the rising sun made me stop and marvel at the natural and unnatural beauty presented on this particular morning. Notice the dam on the right – this was built long ago to provide water to the head of the Delaware Canal, which was once a major shipping route to Philadelphia, bringing coal from eastern PA. Also seen is a railroad bridge – it was the much faster railroads that put the canal companies out of business in the 19th century. But before either one of these it was the rivers themselves that were the arteries of transportation and trade as well as a great source of food for native Americans and early colonialists. Why is Easton located here at “The Forks of the Delaware”? — its all about the rivers!