Lower Red Clay Valley: Hurricane Irene 8/28/2011

Welcome

In New Castle County , Delaware, if you walked along the Red Clay Creek from Faulkland Road to a little beyond Stanton you would pass remnants of Delaware's history / heritage. Here are remains of a 19th. century amusement park, a 1860's steam train, saw and grist mills along with cotton mills that supplied cloth to the army during the Civil War. Here Gen. George Washington's Army entrenched in 1777 for the defense of Philadelphia and in 1782 the French camped here returning from the final battle of the Revoloutionary War in Yorktown. Also, at the southern end is The Washington - Rochambeau Revolutionary Route (W3R). A 650 mile route taken by the allied US and French Forces from Rhode Island to Virginia for the last major battle of the Revolutionary War. In The Lower Red Clay Valley, the Route crosses the Red Clay Creek in Stanton. This route (W3R) is now a National Parks Service Historic Trail.
As we can see we are not looking at one single event or structure. In this three mile stretch we see Stanton, the earliest settlement in Millcreek hundred, with it's first mill in the third quarter of the 17th century to the last millsite, upstream, closing in 2003. Over the last 325 years many changes have occured, but with names like George Washington and Oliver Evans to events like aprox. 11500 Continental Troops encamped along the Lower Red Clay in 1777 and the Council of War held at the Hale-Byrnes House, in Stanton, during the same year to the remnants of at least five millsites along it's banks, it is hard not to take notice that this short stretch holds quite a bit of Delaware's history.
If you were to stray not far from the stream you could still find structures and landscapes that have supported these activities and more.
The intent of this site is to show these resources in photos and maybe a little text to help tell its story.

Clicking on some of the photos will enlarge them. Please feel free to leave a comment.