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Lafayette River

River in the United States of America

Summary

River in the United States of America

Field	Value
name	Lafayette River
country	United States
state	Virginia
subdivision_name3	Norfolk
subdivision_type3	City
mouth	Elizabeth River
name_other	Tanner's Creek	length_mi = 6.2
mouth_coordinates

The Lafayette River, earlier known as Tanner's Creek, is a 6.2 mi 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.{{Cite news|url=https://scholarworks.wm.edu/reports/372/|title=Shoreline Evolution: City of Norfolk, Virginia Chesapeake Bay, Elizabeth and Lafayette River Shorelines

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 Chesepians, a group of eastern-Algonquian speaking Native Americans (American Indian) affiliated with the Powhatan Confederacy. The main village of the Chesepians was called Skicoak, believed to have been located along Tanner's Creek.

As the British Colony of Virginia expanded, the Native Americans were overwhelmed, initially moving further inland. In 1634, the original eight shires of Virginia (counties) were formed, and the area of Tanner's Creek was designated as within Elizabeth River Shire. (Despite popular misconception that the namings were related Queen Elizabeth I, both Elizabeth River Shire and the Elizabeth River were named to honor Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of King James I of England. She was the sister of the ill-fated Prince Henry and his younger brother Prince Charles, who later ascended to the throne as King Charles I). The naming of Tanner's Creek and Tanner's Point at its confluence with the Elizabeth River each derived from one of the early settler's and adjacent landowners, Daniel Tanner.

In 1892, the City of Norfolk purchased the 114 acre of land near Tanner's Creek for a park. It was named Lafayette Park in 1899. Soon after, Tanner's Creek was renamed the Lafayette River in honor of the Marquis de La Fayette, a French Army officer who became a popular American Revolutionary War hero as French forces aided with vital assistance in the achievement of United States' freedom from British rule.

References

{{gnis. 1491087
U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. [http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The National Map] {{webarchive. link. (2012-03-29 , accessed April 1, 2011)
''The Elizabeth River'', by Amy Waters Yarsinske, The History Press, 2007, {{ISBN. 1-59629-207-5, {{ISBN. 978-1-59629-207-9
"O V - The Nickel Tour VI - Margaret Friedmann's City Park Memories".
(2012-02-14). "Sargeant Memorial Room - Pages from Norfolk's Past".
"Transportation Beyond Tanner's Creek/Lafayette River".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

tributaries-of-the-chesapeake-bay estuaries-of-virginia rivers-of-norfolk,-virginia

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