Bronx River

The Bronx River, approximately 24 miles (39 km) long, flows through southeast New York in the United States. It is named after colonial settler Jonas Bronck. The Bronx River is the only fresh water river in New York City.

It originally rose in what is now the Kensico Reservoir, in Westchester County north of New York City. With the construction of the Kensico Dam in 1885, however, the river was cut off from its natural headwaters and today a small tributary stream serves as its source. The Bronx River flows south past White Plains, then south-southwest through the northern suburbs, passing through Edgemont, Tuckahoe, Eastchester, and Bronxville. It forms the border between the large cities of Yonkers and Mount Vernon, and flows into the northern end of The Bronx, southward through Bronx Park, New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo and continues through urbanized areas of the South Bronx where it divides East Bronx from West Bronx. It empties into the East River, a tidal strait connected to Long Island Sound, between the Soundview and Hunts Point neighborhoods.

In the 17th century, the river - called by the natives "Aquehung" - served as a boundary between loosely associated bands under sachems of the informal confederacy of the Weckquaeskeck, Europeanized as the Wappinger; the east bank of the river was the boundary for the Siwanoy, clammers and fishermen. The same line would be retained when manors were granted to the Dutch and the English. The Algonkian significance of the name is variously reported; the acca- element, as represented in the Long Island place-name Accabonac, was deformed into the more familiar, suitably watery European phoneme aque-.

The tract purchased by Jonas Bronck in 1639 lay between the Harlem River and the river that came to be called "Bronck's river".