Nassawango Creek

Nassawango Creek is a stream in the U.S. state of Maryland; it is the largest tributary of the Pocomoke River, located on the Delmarva Peninsula. Older variations on the same name include Nassanongo, Naseongo, Nassiongo, and Nassiungo, meaning "[ground] between [the streams]".[1] Early English records have it as Askimenokonson Creek, after a Native settlement near its headwaters (askimenokonson roughly approximating a local Algonquian word meaning "stony place where they pick early [straw]berries").[2]

The Nassawango (locally /næsəˈwɒŋɡoʊ/ or /næsəˈwæŋɡoʊ/) rises in Wicomico County, Maryland and flows 20.8 miles (33.5 km)[3] through Worcester County to join the Pocomoke below Snow Hill. Large portions of its drainage lie within the Pocomoke River State Forest and The Nature Conservancy's Nassawango Creek Preserve.[4] Nassawango Creek and its tributaries were once dammed in several places for mills; one dam site, became an early industrial blast furnace operation, where bog iron ore was smelted to make pig iron at Furnacetown during the first half of the 19th century. Today, the furnace grounds are considered a local historical landmark.

References
  1. Runkle, Stephen A. Native American Waterbody and Place Names within the Susquehanna River Basin and Surrounding Subbasins Publication 229. Susquehanna River Basin Commission, September 2003.
  2. Quesada-Embid, Mercedes (2004), "Five Hundred Years on Five Thousand Acres: Human Attitudes and Land Use at Nassawango Creek", Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture, Native Americans of the Delmarva Peninsula, Salisbury, MD, archived from the original on 2012-12-14, retrieved June 21, 2020CS1 maint: unfit url (link)
  3. U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map, accessed April 1, 2011
  4. "Nassawango Creek Preserve". The Nature Conservancy. Archived from the original on 2008-10-02. Retrieved June 21, 2020.

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