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19-708: The Brandywine crosses the Fall Line just north of Wilmington, and descends from about 160 feet (49 m) above sea level in Chadds Ford to just a few feet above sea level in Wilmington. The river's descent allowed manufacturers — notably, of flour and gunpowder — to use high-powered machinery in the days before the steam engine , while its navigable channel to the Delaware River and Delaware Bay allowed them to load oceangoing ships. By 1687,

38-462: 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. Quakers Elizabeth Levis Shipley, her husband William Shipley, and Thomas Canby were important in establishing the village and its supporting flour mills. By 1743, Thomas's son Oliver owned 3 mill sites. A dam and a millrace south of

57-594: 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 . Oliver Evans in the 1780s helped local mills increase their efficiency, ushering in the Industrial Revolution . His first design for a fully integrated automatic flour mill was first used for a mill on nearby Red Clay Creek in 1783 and gradually gained acceptance from Brandywine millers. The grain

76-460: A fault displaces the ground surface so that one side is higher than the other, a fault scarp is created. This can occur in dip-slip faults , or when a strike-slip fault brings a piece of high ground adjacent to an area of lower ground. Earth is not the only planet where escarpments occur. They are believed to occur on other planets when the crust contracts , as a result of cooling. On other Solar System bodies such as Mercury , Mars , and

95-588: Is a 900-mile (1,400 km) escarpment where the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain meet in the eastern United States . Much of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line passes through areas where no evidence of faulting is present. The fall line marks the geologic boundary of hard metamorphosed terrain—the product of the Taconic orogeny —and the sandy, relatively flat alluvial plain of

114-525: Is now a historic district in the city. A mill race once used to provide water power is still in working condition in Brandywine Park near downtown Wilmington. This park was designed in the 1890s by Frederick Law Olmsted . 39°45′8″N 75°32′27″W  /  39.75222°N 75.54083°W  / 39.75222; -75.54083 Atlantic Seaboard fall line Download coordinates as: The Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line , or Fall Zone ,

133-577: The Moon , the Latin term rupes is used for an escarpment. When sedimentary beds are tilted and exposed to the surface, erosion and weathering may occur. Escarpments erode gradually and over geological time . The mélange tendencies of escarpments results in varying contacts between a multitude of rock types. These different rock types weather at different speeds, according to Goldich dissolution series so different stages of deformation can often be seen in

152-460: The plateau . Scarps are generally formed by one of two processes: either by differential erosion of sedimentary rocks , or by movement of the Earth's crust at a geologic fault . The first process is the more common type: the escarpment is a transition from one series of sedimentary rocks to another series of a different age and composition. Escarpments are also frequently formed by faults. When

171-725: 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 before the American Revolution. The village was annexed by the City of Wilmington in 1869. It

190-503: The Piedmont–Coastal Plain fall line include the following (from north to south): Escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations . The terms scarp and scarp face are often used interchangeably with escarpment . Some sources differentiate the two terms, with escarpment referring to

209-511: The ascent of the tide; the falls of every river within that space being precisely at the head of the tide; pursuing thence southwardly a direction nearly parallel to the mountains, it recedes from the sea, leaving in each southern river an extent of good navigation between the tide and the falls. Other falls of less magnitude are found at the gaps of the Blue Ridge , through which the rivers have forced their passage... Some cities that lie along

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228-607: The creek had been built. Prominent Quaker millers, including the Canbys , Leas, and Tatnalls , built their stone homes along Market Street, and built the Brandywine Academy building in 1798. A cupola was added to the academy in 1820, and it rang as the Marquis de Lafayette visited on October 6, 1824. By 1806 there were "about fifty or sixty snug brick, stone, and frame houses" in the village and about 12 mills. In 1760

247-460: The fall line as an obstacle to improved national communication and commerce between the Atlantic seaboard and the western river systems: The most prominent, though not perhaps the most insuperable obstacle in the navigation of the Atlantic rivers, consists in their lower falls, which are ascribed to a presumed continuous granite ridge, rising about one hundred and thirty feet above tide water. That ridge from New York to James River inclusively arrests

266-405: The margin between two landforms , and scarp referring to a cliff or a steep slope. In this usage an escarpment is a ridge which has a gentle slope on one side and a steep scarp on the other side. More loosely, the term scarp also describes a zone between a coastal lowland and a continental plateau which shows a marked, abrupt change in elevation caused by coastal erosion at the base of

285-411: The necessary portage around them. Numerous cities initially formed along the fall line because of the easy river transportation to seaports, as well the availability of water power to operate mills and factories, thus bringing together river traffic and industrial labor. U.S. Route 1 and I-95 link many of the fall-line cities. In 1808, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin noted the significance of

304-577: The site from 1802, and by 1810 the site was the largest gunpowder producer in the country. During the Civil War 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 . In 1796 the village contained 12 mills that could grind 400,000 bushels of grain per year. By 1815 several toll roads connected the village with Pennsylvania's grain-growing regions, including

323-622: The upper continental shelf, formed of unconsolidated Cretaceous and Cenozoic sediments . Examples of Fall Zone features include the Potomac River's Little Falls and the rapids in Richmond, Virginia , where the James River falls across a series of rapids down to its own tidal estuary. Before navigation improvements, such as locks, the fall line was generally the head of navigation on rivers due to their rapids or waterfalls, and

342-476: The world, Bancroft Mills , which is now closed. In 1795 Jacob Broom built the first cotton mill on the Brandywine, a few miles north of the village. The mill burned down in 1797, and in 1802 Broom sold the site, complete with a working dam and millrace , to Eleuthère Irénée du Pont , who paid $ 6,740 for the 95 acres (380,000 m). Gunpowder mills, known as the Eleutherian Mills , operated on

361-587: Was unloaded on the ground floor and raised to the top floor by waterpower. Gravity moved the grain through the stages of cleaning, drying, grinding, spreading, and cooling, in a continuous manufacturing process. The first paper mill in Delaware was opened by Joshua Gilpin , Thomas Gilpin Jr. and Miers Fisher in 1787 in Brandywine Village. This site was later used by one of the largest textile mills in

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