10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Delaware River

Frank Harris Moyer explores the waterway in his new book, "The Delaware River: History, Traditions and Legends."

Growing up in Phillipsburg, Frank Harris Moyer learned the advantages of living near the Delaware River. “My father was a sportsman—hunting, fishing, camping, canoeing,” says Moyer, 76 and a retired educator. “He started taking me along when I was young.”

Moyer turned his interest in the waterway into his newly published first book, The Delaware River: History, Traditions and Legends (The History Press).

Here are 10 facts about the river from his book.

1. The river is named for Thomas West, the third Baron De La Warr and Virginia’s first royal governor.

2. It flows more than 330 miles, from the Catskill Mountains in New York to Cape May.

3. The Delaware is one of the nation’s last major rivers without a dam.

4. The Delaware River Watershed provides water to nearly 8 percent of the U.S. population.

5. The Riverton Yacht Club in Burlington County, founded in 1865, is the oldest yacht club on the river.

6. More than 20 islands in the river are on the New Jersey side.

7. Constructed in 1806, the Lower Trenton Bridge is the first recorded span across the river.

8. Later that year, the Northampton Street Bridge, the first span between Phillipsburg and Easton, Pennsylvania, opened to traffic.

9. The Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power plants use more than 3 billion gallons of cooling water per day from the Delaware River estuary.

10. The first summertime visitors to the Delaware Water Gap arrived in 1820. It is now part of a national recreation area.

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