Delaware Water Gap

Delaware Water Gap: The Valley That Wouldn't Drown

19 stops· 35 min· 27.4 mi

The place where the Delaware River saws straight through a mountain — and the valley America tried to drown and never did. This self-guided driving tour runs the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware Water Gap, from the great notch in the ridge north past a string of the finest waterfalls in the East to the old river town of Milford. Ranger Quinn keeps you oriented and safe and tells you what you're seeing — how the river cut the Gap, the falls, the eagles and shad of the last great wild river in the East. Ranger Boone Merrick brings the tales: the enormous dam the government began here in the nineteen-sixties, the thousands of families it forced off their land by eminent domain, the reservoir that was never filled, the hippies who squatted the emptied farmhouses, the old Lenape homeland and the swindle that took it, and a road older than the country. Three short waterfall walks, one river that would not be tamed. Wear your life jacket near the water — and roll north.