Did You Know: Engineering marvel with Dutch roots
The scenic walking trail that leads westward from old New Castle's Battery Park along the Delaware River is a pleasing stroll along a path and beach that post-Superstorm Sandy repairs have made all the nicer.
That path is built atop the Gambacorta and Army Creek dikes, two pieces of a four-part dike system that serves as New Castle's flood prevention system and contributes to marsh conservation. But Gambacorta wasn't originally meant to help prevent flooding.
The path of the dike first appears on mid-19th-century maps and appears to have originally created as a road that by around 1870 carried a single-track railroad from the park to what was then the Delaware Iron Company - later, the Tasker Iron Works. Pieces of iron slag, relics of those operations, still can be found along the beach.
Today, the refurbished dike carries walkers and bikers. Although less than half of its original width, Gambacorta, long with Army Creek and the even more southernly Red Lion, also serves to help control county flooding during high-water events, according to a 2013 study of the dikes.
Many fear such events are on the increase. As storms intensify and sea levels rise, the aging dikes play an ever more important role along the coasts of the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. Millions of dollars have been committed in recent years to repair them.
It didn't take long for the state's original settlers to build dikes along nearly the entire coast that abuts the river, as well as tributaries such as the Christina River. "Delaware and New Jersey have lots of dikes," said Alice H. Guerrant, an historian with the state Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. "This is an area that was settled by the Dutch. And the English to some degree. But diking is sort of a Dutch mindset."
More than just mindset, however, the Dutch and other early settlers had specific reasons for building dikes in the state:
- Flood control;
- To control water flow, through the use of sluices or tidal gates, in and out of marshes, many of which were used to grow "salt hay" for winter feed;
- Transportation corridors along the marshy coast.
The first of New Castle's four dikes, built to cross marshland north of the city, was today's Broad Marsh Dike, first referenced in January 1675. Another, further north, was called Swanwyck, which may be today's Buttonwood Dike. They were earthen, and sometimes reinforced with timber pilings, stone or reeds.
The southernmost of the four structures, Army Creek, was overwhelmed by the Hurricane of 1878. According to a newspaper account, "The banks were broken all along the river front. ... Tasker's Bank suffered the worst, with the employees at the Iron Works being driven from their avocations. The railroad along the shore was completely destroyed eventhough the bank was stone-faced and over 60 feet wide at the top."
While all suffered damage, the dikes did their job during 2012's Superstorm Sandy, when the river's water rose about six feet above mean sea level, according to an analysis published by the New Castle Community History and Archeology Program. Water above that level or failure could cause significant flooding on nearly all sides of old New Castle. A breach of the oldest New Castle dike, Broad Marsh, located just north of town, for instance, could flood the Chestnut Street-St. Peter Church area, the River Plaza shopping center and the north side of town.
Contact William H. McMichael at (302) 324-2812 or firstname.lastname@example.org. On Twitter: @billmcmichael