Brandywine Creek State Park History

Lenape Life on the Brandywine

The first known established civilization to inhabit the land along the Brandywine Creek was the Lenape. 

The Lenape were a hunting/gathering/farming society who spanned the land that is now Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. They would hunt the deer, bears, wolves, rabbits, squirrels, and ducks in the Mid-Atlantic forests using snare traps and bow and arrows, and they would turn animal hides into winter clothing. Before colonization, the woods surrounding the Brandywine Creek were filled with tall old growth spruce and chestnut trees. The Lenape planted crops such as corn, beans, and squash, but they continued to rely on the use of wild seed and nut crops, as well as the annual runs of fish upstream.

The Brandywine Creek was a key source of fish for the Lenape. Each year, millions of shad migrate from the oceans to freshwater rivers for reproduction. The Lenape took advantage of this annual migration, building temporary V-shaped dams that would corral the fish downstream into baskets at the end of the dam. Using this method of fishing, the Lenape were able to gather enough fish for not just the spring and summer, but also to preserve for the winter by drying and smoking them. 

When the first colonists arrived around 1624 from Sweden and England, they were able to establish trading posts along the Delaware River to trade with the Lenape for furs and food. However, the Lenape began to struggle with the flood of colonists coming to the East Coast as they introduced smallpox and used up the Lenape's natural resources. The shad fish that they so heavily relied on were no longer making it to the Lenape fishing sites because settlers had installed so many dams upstream, obstructing the path of the fish migration. The colonists were constructing these dams to collect water to power their milling operations, an industry that was growing rapidly. In 1684, the Lenape on the Brandywine were given exclusive use of Queonemysing, a seasonal fishing village on the Brandywine Creek at the Big Bend near the DE/PA border, by William Penn. However, the land disputes with surrounding property owners and decline in fish populations due to dam construction ultimately forced the Lenape out of Brandywine Creek.

The DuPont Family

The most significant milling operation in our area was through the DuPont company. In 1801, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, the founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.,  purchased property from Jacob Broom on the Brandywine River for a gunpowder factory named Eleutherian Mills.  This original property was located on what is today the Hagley Museum, and the family continued to expand both their property and business, notably producing gunpowder for the American Civil War and World War I. Because of the DuPont family's extensive activity on our land, most of our cultural resources and artifacts originate from their time. 

Henry A. DuPont, grandson of Eleuthère Irénée, was the first of his family to purchase land that is today located in our park. He purchased the land in 1881 as an extension of the Winterthur estate, which still stands today and was established by his aunt Evelina DuPont. This is the land at the western corner of our park, at the intersection of Adam’s Dam road, and held a mill that operated on Wilson’s Run. By 1917, all park land on the west bank of the river was DuPont property used for their milling and agriculture operations. A sawmill was established near Tulip Tree Woods to cut the American Chestnut trees that were then dying of the blight, and Winterthur dairy farm occupied most of the land they owned. It was around this time, as well, that the dry stonewalls were built around the farms, taking about 40 years to build. These walls separated crop fields from cattle fields.

Brandywine Creek State Park land would continue to be DuPont property until 1965, when Ellen DuPont Wheelwright conveyed part of the land to the State.