Brandywine Creek State Park

Look at what's popping in the Pollinator Garden! Although recently trimmed our garden has already has some early blooming flowers. You can find Golden Alexander blooming a bright yellow, some Common Stars of Bethlehem, and the beginnings of our common milkweed's flowers start to develop!
What flower are you most excited to see bloom in our garden this year? 🌼🪻🌷

New at the Nature Center

Stop in at the Nature Center to check out neat buttons found in the park.

We are hiring!!!📣

Want to spend your summer outdoors working at Brandywine Creek? We are now looking for a seasonal interpreter. Join our interpretation team as we provide public and group programs, participate in state wide conservation projects, plan and work on displays in the Nature Center and spend some time in the creek😎.
Check out the DE State Jobs website for more information on how to apply.



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top left corner: Naturalist interpreting with school group.
top Right: Naturalist tubing down the Brandywine Creek.
bottom left: Naturalist helping the youth conservation core ID plants in garden.
Bottom right: Tractor driver smiling.

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Join us May 9th for a Mothers Day hike through our Tulip Tree Preserve! Old growth forests are the best place to find spring ephemeral flowers like Virginia Spring Beauties, Blood Wart, and Rue Anemone. Come along with our Naturalists to learn more about these seasonal flowers and what makes old growth forests so special! Free Program with paid park admission. to register Call (302) 655 5740 or email [email protected]

Even with these past few chilly mornings we cant help but think about all the fun packed summer we have planned here at BCSP. Especially we cant wait to get back out on the creek. Whether its tubing with our summer camps or canoeing with friends, there's lots to look forward to do out on the water.

Tag your Brandywine paddle buddy! 🚣‍♂️🚣‍♀️🚣

Join us this Saturday on our monthly Full Moon Hike! this month we are celebrating the May Flower moon. come along as our Naturalist leads you through our meadows under the moon glow to talk about why we call this the Flower Moon and what makes our moon so bright! this program is $8 a person. Register online at DEStateParks.com/programs



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Picture: Moon over the tree line with white text saying " Full moon Hike: The Flower Moon!
Saturday, May 2nd at 8PM $8 per person Register on the DE State Parks Website"

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It’s Flashback Friday, and we’re looking back at past park memories this year in celebration of Delaware State Park’s 75th Anniversary as well as the 250th Anniversary of our nation. This week we are flashing back with this canoeing classic of the Brandywine Canoe Club! Taken in 1942, these pictures show two families of Brandywine Canoe Club members getting ready to embark on a canoe trip and picnic to celebrate a holiday weekend. According to an interview with one of the people pictured in the photo, the group was headed a mile upstream to a cabin along the big rocks for their holiday picnic. The men would canoe their way there, while the women drove the supplies over in their car.

By 1942, the Brandywine Canoe Club was already well established after being founded in 1907 by a group of local canoeing enthusiasts. They had built a one-story structure for housing canoes, the canoe ramp down the Brandywine Creek, and the steps we can see in the pictures. That canoe shed itself could accommodate 45 canoes, and was used from the group's founding until they ceased operations in the mid-1970s. After that point, the shed was left to fall into ruin. During their time, the group was known to hold picnics, social gatherings, and joint ventures with other local canoe clubs along the Christiana and Delaware rivers. Commonly, canoers would paddle north from the canoe shed to Thompson’s Bridge, Chadds Ford, or even Lenape Park.

From 1954 until 1968, the Brandywine Canoe Club also co-sponsored the Brandywine Canoe Slalom in Wilmington. This whitewater canoe race was not for the faint of heart as it pitted contestants against the fast currents of the Brandywine. Tasked with completing the course in the shortest time, different groups of canoe and kayak paddlers competed on routes that required them to handle their crafts forward, backwards, and sideways against the currents.

Have any memories of the Brandywine Canoe Club or one of their events? Please feel free to share them in the comments below!

Happy Earth Day from all of us here at Brandywine Creek State Park!🌎❤️

Earth Day holds a special place in our hearts, not just because its a reason to celebrate the marvelous habitats that can be found here, the miles of trail, or even the historic scenery. Earth Day started as a protest, average citizens speaking their concerns about the environment and how corporations were polluting our natural resources. Because of this uproar we now have protections for our air, water, and land against industry. Creating healthier conditions for not just people but also the native wildlife that also calls Delaware their home. Brandywine Creek exists because of the communities around us, who saw purpose to reserve this land for generations to see and experience. Many of our earliest naturalists were volunteers who started their work because they saw a need to not only educate others but to create a connection between man and resource. Today we celebrate the everyday people that do extraordinary things, let it be starting the wave that created legislation on the federal level or preserving a small bit of land in Northern Delaware for many generations to enjoy.



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Picture 1: grey/blue stone walls with a purple sunrise over the hilly horizon.
Picture 2: picture of the Brandywine Creek with a sycamore tree leaning over arching over the bank

It’s Flashback Friday, and we’re looking back at past park memories this year in celebration of Delaware State Park’s 75th Anniversary as well as the 250th Anniversary of our nation. This week we are flashing back with these over the mooo-n photos of cows along the Brandywine! While many people know about our parklands agricultural past, few visitors look at the banks of the Brandywine Creek today and recognize a former pasture to dairy cattle. However, if we go back over 100 years, that is exactly what we get!

These pictures were taken in the 1920s by Henry A. Strohmeyer Jr., who was a specialist in livestock photography from New York. He was hired by several of the local well-known farms to photograph their herds, including Winterthur Dairy Farms. During the 1920s, Henry Francis du Pont of Winterthur owned all 433 acres of land that is now the western side of Brandywine Creek State Park. That land included Indian Springs Farm, which we can see pictured here behind the cattle! During our Winterthur days, the pastures around Indian Springs were home to 30 Holstein Friesen dairy cattle. We know about the cattle themselves thanks to an oral history interview conducted in 1973 by Winterthur Museum with a former Indian Springs Farm resident and retired Winterthur Farms employee, Howard Lattomus.

Howard Lattomus spoke about the second picture in particular and said “That’s what it (the picture) was taken for, the cattle. And they were those reactors I was telling you about that weren’t allowed to stay with the main herd and they were down at Rockland until they had proven that they were tuberculosis free. They were suspects in other words. They’d bring two or three down and maybe in a year or two they’d make a new test and if they were free they’d take them back again. We always had thirty down there.”

Mr. Lattomus gave us further insight into his relationship with the cows and his daily life growing up on a farm in another oral history interview in 1988 , saying: “I was too young to realize what the trouble was. I know I had to milk 15 of ‘em every morning and every night. And then over on Thompson’s Bridge, all that area, was a sheep farm. We had 300 sheep in there at one time. I had to go up and feed them every morning—put hay down and fill the troughs full of feed, then come back and milk 15 cows, and then eat my breakfast and walk to school, over here at Montchanin. The same thing at night. Kept me busy.”

Photographs are courtesy of The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.