Lafayette River
Lafayette River Tanner's Creek | |
---|---|
Location | |
Country | United States |
State | Virginia |
City | Norfolk |
Physical characteristics | |
Mouth | Elizabeth River |
• coordinates | 36°53′46″N 76°19′24″W / 36.8960°N 76.3232°W |
Length | 6.2 miles (10.0 km) |
The Lafayette River, earlier known as Tanner's Creek,[1] is a 6.2-mile-long (10.0 km)[2] tidal estuary which empties into the Elizabeth River just south of Sewell's Point near its mouth at Hampton Roads, which in turn empties into the southern end of Chesapeake Bay in southeast Virginia in the United States. It is entirely located in the city of Norfolk, Virginia.[3]
History
The small river was initially known as Tanner's Creek. At the time of the arrival of the English colonists in 1607, the area around the creek was inhabited by the
As the British
The areas drained by Tanner's Creek became part of a subdivided area of the original shire in 1691 known as Norfolk County. Eventually, after a series of annexations by the growing and expanding commerce center of the independent city of Norfolk to the south, all of the waterway became located within the corporate limits. (The remaining portion of Norfolk County not previously annexed by the growing cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth and tiny South Norfolk were consolidated with South Norfolk to form the new independent city of Chesapeake in 1963).
In 1892, the City of Norfolk purchased the 114 acres (0.46 km2) of land near Tanner's Creek for a park. It was named Lafayette Park in 1899.
See also
References
- ^ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Lafayette River
- ^ U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Archived 2012-03-29 at the Wayback Machine, accessed April 1, 2011
- ^ "Shoreline Evolution: City of Norfolk, Virginia Chesapeake Bay, Elizabeth and Lafayette River Shorelines". College of William & Mary. Retrieved September 16, 2016.
- ISBN 978-1-59629-207-9
- ^ "O V - The Nickel Tour VI - Margaret Friedmann's City Park Memories". rkpuma.com. Archived from the original on 2004-04-30.
- ^ "Sargeant Memorial Room - Pages from Norfolk's Past". 2012-02-14. Archived from the original on 2012-02-14. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
- ^ "Transportation Beyond Tanner's Creek/Lafayette River".