Mill Creek is a 9.6-mile-long (15.4 km) stream principally located in northern New Castle County, Delaware, a tributary of the White Clay Creek. It takes its name the large number of mills (mostly gristmills and sawmills) located along it during the 18th and early 19th centuries.
It originates a short distance over the state line near Kaolin, Pennsylvania and flows east, then south into Delaware. It passes under the Lancaster Pike at Hockessin, where Swift Memorial Park has been laid out along the stream between Old Lancaster Pike and the Wilmington and Western Railroad tracks. Leaving Hockessin, the stream turns slightly to the west, and then sharply towards the southeast to flow through a deep, wooded gorge between suburban developments. Further down the gorge, Mill Creek passes through Limestone Hills Park, and then forms the western boundary of the DelCastle Recreation Area. Continuing south and passing under Limestone Road, the hills on either side diminish in height, and development increases, although the steep sides have protected the creek from direct encroachment. Passing through the neighborhood known as "Milltown", Lindell Park lies along the creek between Milltown Road and Kirkwood Highway. Below Kirkwood Highway, the valley begins to open, and the creek skirts Delaware Park and passes under the Wilmington and Christiana Turnpike just before it empties into the White Clay.
Famous quotes containing the words mill, creek and/or clay:
“My temptation is quiet.
Here at lifes end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bone,
Can make the truth known.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (18251895)