- location near Felton - elevation 3 ft (1 m) Basin area 274.5 km² Source Felton Mouths Bowers, Delaware Bay | - location Bowers Length 35 km Basin area 274.5 km² Country United States of America | |
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The Murderkill River is a river flowing to Delaware Bay in central Delaware in the United States. It is approximately 21.7 miles (34.9 km) long and drains an area of 106 square miles (270 km2) on the Atlantic Coastal Plain.
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Map of Murderkill River, Bowers, DE, USA
The Murderkill flows for its entire length in southern Kent County. It rises just west of Felton and flows generally east-northeastwardly, through Killen Pond (site of Killens Pond State Park) and Coursey Pond, under Carpenters Bridge, and past Frederica to Bowers, where it enters Delaware Bay about 0.5 miles (1 km) south of the mouth of the St. Jones River. The Murderkill River is tidally influenced from its mouth upstream to just past Frederica, and is considered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to be navigable for the lower 10 miles (16 km) of its course.
According to 2002 data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 55% of the area of the Murderkill River's watershed is occupied by agricultural uses; 17% is forested; 14% is urban; 9% is wetland; and 2% is water.
The river has suffered a persistent pollution from eutrophication and organic waste in agricultural runoff. Its estuary is considered to have abnormally low rates of dissolved oxygen.
Origin of nameEdit
One description of the river's naming was recorded in 1945 by George R. Stewart, but is now considered to be an apocryphal folk tale:
...remembering how they had been served at the Whore-Kill, they went some ten or twelve miles higher, where they landed again and traded with the Indians, trusting the Indians to come onto their stores ashore, and likewise aboard their sloop drinking and debauching with the Indians until they were at last barbarously murdered, and so that place was christened with their blood and to this day is called the Murderer-Kill, that is, Murderers Creek.
Dick Carter, Chair of the Delaware Heritage Commission, states that the name of Murderkill River is taken from the original Dutch for Mother River. Mother is moeder in Middle Dutch, and river is Kille. Later, under British rule, the word "River" was added to the waterway's name, effectively making it "mother river river." The term "kill" is used in areas of Dutch influence in the Delaware and Hudson Valleys and other areas of the former New Netherland colony of Dutch America to describe a strait, river, or arm of the sea such as Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania.
Variant namesEdit
According to the Geographic Names Information System, the Murderkill River has also been known historically as: