The Delaware itself — the longest free-flowing river left in the East, and why its eagles, shad, and clean water still run.
Look out at the river running alongside you, because it's more remarkable than it looks. The Delaware is the longest free-flowing river left in the eastern United States — over three hundred miles from the Catskills to the sea, and not a single dam across its main stem the whole way. Not one. In a country that dammed nearly every river it could reach, the Delaware runs wild and open, start to finish. And Boone will tell you how close it came to losing that, right here.
That free-flowing water is why this valley is so alive. Every spring, American shad — big silvery fish — surge up the river from the ocean to spawn, the way they have for thousands of years, in what was once the greatest shad run on the Atlantic coast; a dam would have ended it. And where there are fish, there are eagles: bald eagles fish this river all year, and in winter a hundred and fifty or more of them gather along the upper Delaware — so keep your eyes on the big riverside trees and the sky. A white head and tail on a soaring bird is no longer a rare sight here; it's one of the great comeback stories in America, playing out over your windshield.
Clean, wild, undammed, full of eagles and fish — this is what a healthy river looks like. The fact that you can still see it is not an accident. It's a decision people made, and fought for, in this very valley.
Photo: J. Passepartout · CC BY-SA 4.0
