WHAT IS A WATERSHED?
A watershed is a geographic area of land across which water, and the sediments and dissolved materials it contains, flow on their way to a single common outlet – a stream, lake or river.
A watershed can be compared to a basin collecting all the precipitation that falls within it and carrying this to a common outlet. A watershed includes not only the land within its boundaries but also the surface water of lakes, streams, and wetlands as well as the groundwater moving beneath the surface. Watersheds vary from the largest river basins to just a few acres in size.
Watersheds are natural systems that link land and water resources and the living organisms, including people, within their boundaries. How we live on the land affects the quality and quantity of water resources within the watershed.
What is in a name?
“Saucon Creek to us, was Sakunk to the first American…”
The true meaning of Saucon was actually given to the creek by Lenni Lenape Native Americans name for a the creek Sakunk, which means “place of outlet, where a small stream empties into a larger stream.” According to the following poem by Robert Hoppes, member of the original Lower Saucon Township Historical Society, the Saucon bas basically remained the same over the last 300 years.
“Saucon Creek to us,
was Sakunk to the first American.
‘Tis spelled differently
and possibly not sounded as then. Despite changes in course and depth, time made, it chanced to last
And stay much the same it was prior to the Indian past:”
