So You're Moving to Delaware

So, You’re Moving to Delaware!

A Handbook to Being a Delawarean

RUSSELL C WORDS 1

SO YOU’RE MOVING TO DELAWARE: A HANDBOOK TO BEING A DELAWAREAN Copyright 2014 by Russell C Words All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Russell C Words Flat Rock NC 28739 International Standard Book Number 978-1-935771-26-5 Manufactured in the United States of America

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Moving to Delaware...

What’s Up With...

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those things that make Delaware uniquely Delaware

Living in Delaware

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The Towns of Delaware

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Celebrating in Delaware Cheering in Delaware Driving in Delaware Eating in Delaware Partying in Delaware Playing in Delaware Politickiing in Delaware Shopping in Delaware

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Prologue So you are thinking of moving to Delaware. Or are moving or are already here.

Some eight million Americans move to a new state every year. Now you’re one of them. You’ve come to right place.

In these pages you’ll learn the explanations behind the quirks, the traditions and the secrets that make Delaware uniquely Delaware. So You’re Moving to Delaware!...A Handbook to Being a Delawarean will help you join the club in no time.

Million-dollar license plates? Solved. The Ebright Azimuth?

A mystery no more. Best springtime stroll in Delaware?

Identified. Secret beaches? Revealed.

Celebrating in Delaware...Cheering in Delaware...Driving in Delaware...Eating in Delaware...Partying in Delaware...

Playing in Delaware...Politicking in Delaware...Shopping in Delaware. This book will have you speaking like a native in no time.

Because the next best thing to being a real Delawarean is being able to pass as one.

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What’s Up With... those things that make Delaware uniquely Delaware

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What’s Up With...Being a Delawarean?

So just who is a Delawarean? Well, consider Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Beginning in 1972 Joe Biden was elected seven times to represent Delaware in the United States Senate. He cast more than 10,000 votes from the Capitol floor representing the State of Delaware. When he surrendered his seat to assume the responsibilities as the 47th Vice-President of the United States he was the first politician from Delaware to advance so far onto the national stage. Surely Joe Biden is a Delawarean, right?

Not everyone thinks so. Joe Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and did not not come to Delaware until he was ten years old. Don’t worry, you can start calling yourself a Delawarean any time you want. No one will hold it against you. But you will never be able to slap a “Delaware Native” bumper sticker on your car.

So who do we know who can call themselves “Delawareans?” Well, Valerie Bertinelli for one. Before she became America’s Sweetheart as Bonnie Franklin’s youngest daughter on the TV series One Day at a Time Valerie was born in Wilmington and spent a few years growing up in Claymont. Elisabeth Shue, who bewitched Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid and was everyone’s dream babysitter in Adventures in Babysitting, is another actress who was born in Wilmington but left early. Ditto for Judge Reinhold who anchored two of the best movies

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of the 1980s - Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Beverly Hills Cop. Ryan Phillippe, movie actor and one-time Mr. Reese Witherspoon, is one movie star who was born in Delaware and stayed through high school. Deadpan-actress Aubrey Plaza of the television series Parks and Recreation is another.

Delaware’s greatest contribution to the world of rock music is George Thorogood and his Delaware Destroyers. Wilmington-born George was smitten with baseball at Brandywine High School and his first shows were performed in the dorms on the University of Delaware campus in the early 1970s. By 1981 the American blues stylings of the Destroyers had earned them a gig opening for the Rolling Stones. Delaware also earned an oft-repeated footnote in the lore of popular music history. Global reggae legend Bob Marley spent time in the state in the 1960s when his mother lived in Wilmington.

Marley had yet to sprout his trademark dreadlocks or embrace the Rastafarians as he toiled on the assembly line putting together Chrysler automobiles in Newark.

Two Super Bowl quarterbacks, one winning ( Joe Flacco) and one losing (Rich Gannon), are products of the University of Delaware. But Flacco was born in New Jersey and Gannon in Philadelphia. There are three Delawareans in baseball’s Hall of Fame but the only one born in the state was Bill McGowan, an umpire. The players, Negro Leagues star Judy Johnson and turn-of-the20th century pitcher Vic Willis, were both born in Maryland. Johnson and Willis honed their skills on Delaware diamonds as young players and lived out their lives in the First State after their careers to cement their Delaware bonafides despite being non-natives. The most famous Delaware basketball player is a woman - Elena Delle Donne who set national records as a First State high schooler and star forward at the University of Delaware. Delle Donne was the second player selected in the 2013 WNBA draft and went on to win the Rookie of the Year award with the Chicago Sky.

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What’s Up With...That Arc? If you look at a map of the United States you see there is only one state boundary that features an arc - the top of Delaware forming the border with Pennsylvania. Its official name is the Twelve-Mile Circle and it was created in 1701 at the directive of William Penn himself.

The center of the circle is the cupola atop the courthouse in New Castle and its purpose was to define the southern portion of Penn’s vast land holdings, then known as the “Lower Counties on the Delaware.”

As you can imagine, a circle living in a world of straight lines and right angles is bound to cause problems. On its western edge, where the arc collides with the orderly intersection of Pennsylvania and Maryland, the arc created a triangular swath of land outside the borders of all three states. Ownership of “The Wedge” was disputed until 1921 when it was finally given to Delaware. Ever since the residents of Mechanicsville have been Delawareans existing outside the original TwelveMile Circle.

To the east, the imaginary Twelve-Mile Circle does not grind to a halt at the banks of the Delaware River. Instead, it continues merrily along to the low-tide mark on the New Jersey side of the river. This means that all the islands in the river below Claymont belong to Delaware and not New Jersey. Delaware’s land even includes scruffy marshland on the New Jersey mainland. You can drive to this chunk of Delaware land through the Garden State but it is little more than a fenced-in landfill so it is not really 8

worth seeking out.

But this insult to its sovereignty has always stuck in New Jersey’s craw. Three times the Garden State has taken the issue to the Supreme Court of the United States. Each time the justices sided with Delaware, going so far as to tell New Jersey in 1935 never to bring the matter up again. Even so chastised, New Jersey v. Delaware showed up on the docket again in 2007. And again Jerseyites went home the loser - thwarted by the crazy arc.

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What’s Up With...The “First State?”

Delaware wears its nickname the First State as a badge of honor.

It earned the title honestly back in 1787 when its legislators became the first of the 13 original British colonies to ratify the new United States Constitution. It was never a foregone conclusion that the new government would be approved. The framers had just endured five years of a failed government under the Articles of Confederation and bitter debate was sure to surround this new attempt. Nine of the 13 states were required to OK the Constitution and it would take ten months to wrangle the necessary approvals.

But at the Delaware convention the new government was quickly affirmed with a unanimous vote, 30-0 (no shock since the Constitution provided he tiny state with almost as much federal power as its bigger neighbors). Delaware’s action caught the Pennsylvania delegation by surprise since it was expecting to be the first to ratify as a way of making Philadelphia the permanent national capital. As it is you never hear Pennsylvania brag about being “The Second State.”

When Japanese Navy Type 99 Carrier Bombers laid waste to the United States naval fleet in Pearl Harbor in 1941 on the morning of December 7, it became the “date that will live in infamy.” But to Delawareans December 7 has always been Delaware Day (at least since 1933 when it was first proclaimed) because that is the date the Constitution was ratified. Don’t waste your time looking for celebrations of Delaware Day on December 7, however; it is rarely given any recognition outside of grade schools.

Another “holiday” unique to Delaware is Separation Day, which remembers the time on June 15, 1776 when the The Three Lower Counties of New Castle, Kent and Sussex-upon-Delaware officially broke away from Great Britain and Pennsylvania to become its own colony. There is a celebration for Delaware’s birthday each year and it takes place in New Castle on the second Saturday in June, which, oddly, never includes June 15.

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What’s Up With...The License Plates?

In Delaware license plates are a big deal. Well, maybe not a big deal, but bigger than no deal, which is the case just about anywhere else. It is not the license plates themselves that are prized - the design with the gold numbers on a dark blue background sandwiched between “THE FIRST STATE” and “DELAWARE” has been virtually unchanged since 1962, save for the addition of a gold border. No, the status is in the numbers, not the plates.

Delaware, with a population in the 700,000s, has never needed to issue license plates with letters. It has always been numbers only - and the lower the number the more cachet on First State roads. Number

One goes to the governor, Number Two to the lieutenant governor and Number Three to the secretary of state. After that, the numbers are on the open market. Literally. Other low-population states have numbers-only license plates but there ownership can only be transferred within families. Delaware is the only state to allow private citizens to transfer state-issued plates among each other. On the very rare

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occasion when a single-digit plate comes on the market speculation of auction prices of a million dollars are bandied about. Seriously.

Delaware began issuing tags in 1909 and the state did not need to break into the five digits until eight years later. Until 1946 the plates were crafted of black porcelain with white numerals. You will still see black porcelain plates on Delaware vehicles but most of these are legalized reproductions (the highest original porcelain tag number was 86999 so anything above that is certainly a reproduction). It is when low numbers are found on original porcelain plates that Delaware status seekers begin to salivate and prices skyrocket. Even four- and five-digit plates have value on the Delaware tag market. Numbers are handed out sequentially as they come up at the Department of Motor Vehicles so it is possible to still score a valuable plate by chance.

By the way, the blue and gold on Delaware license plates are not quite the state colors. The official colors are colonial blue and buff muted versions of the ubiquitous blue and gold. The colors blue and gold come from the Swedish flag, Sweden having set up the first permanent settlements on the Delaware River in 1638. The University of Delaware first started using blue and gold back in 1889. Speaking of the University of Delaware...

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What’s Up With...The Blue Hen? Delaware’s association with the Blue Hen goes back to the Revolutionary War, although the sinuous connections are somewhat murky.

What is known is that the Delaware Regiment that was comprised of eight companies distinguished itself on the battlefield from New Jersey to South Carolina. One of the companies from Kent County was led by Captain John Caldwell, said to be an avid fancier of cockfights. Some of his fiercest avian warriors sported handsome blue plumage and somewhere along the line the reputations of Delaware’s soldiers and the Blue Hen chickens became entwined. It was even said that Caldwell would carry two of his best birds onto the battlefield with him.

For those who believe Caldwell would have been better served shouldering a musket and bayonet against the enemy rather than a pair of chickens, the nickname is believed to have sprung from the fact that the Delaware Regiment was one of the few to possess actual uniforms. When the Delawares paraded in their spiffy white breeches, blue coats and black shoes they appeared as sharp and colorful as a flock of gamecocks. For those who would rather cling to the Captain Caldwell chicken-toting version he did die on the field at Princeton in January of 1777, early in the war.

As for that Revolutionary War, the fighting visited Delaware only once. The year was 1777 and the British were biding their time in New York City. George Washington and his Continentals knew they were going to attack the Colonial capital in Philadelphia. The 13

only question was from where the assault would come - through New Jersey or up the Delaware River? British General William Howe chose door Number Three. He sailed around the Delmarva Peninsula and up the Chesapeake Bay, landing near Elkton, Maryland and started marching overland through Delaware towards Philadelphia.

Their movements were monitored by a small corps of militia and Colonial regulars who staged an ambush just south of Newark where Cooch’s Bridge spanned the Christina River. Fighting was spirited during a day of skirmishing with each side losing a couple of dozen men. The Colonials continued to harass the British until the two armies clashed in force just across the Delaware line a week later at the Battle of Brandywine. It was another disaster for the Americans and the British soon settled into cozy Philadelphia for the winter while Washington’s troops shivered at Valley Forge. Cooch’s Bridge deteriorated shortly thereafter and the land remained in the Cooch family until 2003 when some of it along Old Baltimore Pike was purchased by the State to commemorate the battle.

So Delaware emerged from the Revolution as the home of the Fighting Blue Hens. The pugnacious poultry theme was revived in political campaigns and by a unit in the Civil War. The Delaware General Assembly recognized the Blue Hen Chicken as the official state bird in 1939. By that time the University of Delaware had been using the nickname “Fightin’ Blue Hens” for almost three decades.

At the school’s College of Agriculture & Natural Resources you can see some Blue Hen breeders on the campus farm.

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What’s Up With...Hundreds?

When you move to Delaware you will find that your neighbors sometimes don’t refer to the town or county in which they live but speak of hundreds. If you buy property in Delaware you will still see the name of your hundred pop up in real estate transactions. There are 33 of them in Delaware. What’s a hundred?

A hundred is an old English concept of dividing land that was smaller than a county. Each hundred would consist of ten freeholder families, assumed to contain ten family members. Hundreds have disappeared everywhere in America but in Delaware where they have been part of the geography since 1682. These unincorporated subdivisions once had a meaningful role in allocating representation in the legislature but today they exist only for property tax assessments. So when you’re looking to pass as a Delawarean, be prepared to drop the name of your hundred at any time.

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What’s Up With...du Pont this, DuPont That?

No state has had its fortunes tangled up with a company or family more conspicuously than Delaware and E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. It all began in the winter of 1802 when a rudderless French immigrant living in New Jersey named Eleuthere Irenee du Pont was invited to the Brandywine Valley to hunt game. It was not a successful trip. The damp weather fouled his gunpowder so that his musket continually misfired. It was so bad du Pont decided to re-enter the industry he had turned his back on in France as a youth: black powder.

When it came time to launch his new business he remembered what he had seen in northern Delaware: the hardwood forests that would burn to charcoal, one of the ingredients he would need for powder; the abundant granite in the hills to build his mills; and the swift-flowing river to power the grinding wheels.

And so he returned to Delaware to found a dynasty.

One hundred years later the family elders in charge of the business were long in the tooth and tired. They were prepared to sell the gunpowder business to their biggest competitor when three energetic young cousins stepped forward with a proposal to run the company. Together Pierre Samuel, Thomas Coleman and Alfred Irenee du Pont transformed the DuPont Company into one of the world’s largest chemical businesses and invented the modern corporation along the way.

The result is that buildings, highways and schools across Delaware carry the du Pont name. Thousands of acres of parkland have been donated to Delaware from the company or family members. If you enjoy the arts, the theater or any of the world class Brandywine Val-

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ley attractions - Hagley Museum, Mt.Cuba, Winterhur Museum, Longwood Gardens (not in Delaware) and Nemours Mansion were all once du Pont family properties.

After 200 years the DuPont profile has drooped somewhat in Delaware.

The company is no longer the largest private employer in the state (it has slipped behind the army of health care workers at Christiana Care). The last family member to run the chemical company, Lammot du Pont Copeland, stepped down back in 1967. There hasn’t been a high-profile du Pont in Delaware since Pierre S. du Pont IV wrapped up two terms as governor in 1985. Still, scratch the surface of almost anything of consequence in the First State and chances are you will find something du Pont-related underneath. And if you want to accelerate your ascendancy to the status of Delawarean it is small “d” with a space du Pont for the family and large “D,” no space DuPont for the company.

There are other family names you will encounter after moving to Delaware that are tied to the du Ponts in one way or another.

Walter S. Carpenter was the first non-family member to be elected to DuPont’s board of directors and later became president. His brother Ruly was also a company executive who bought the Philadelphia Phillies in 1943; the family owned the team into the 1980s.

Bill Gore was a DuPont Company chemist doing research on flouropolymers before leaving to start his own company in 1958 that resulted in waterproof GoreTex fabrics. Today his son Robert is chairman of W.L. Gore & Associates and the richest man in the state.

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What’s Up With...Caesar Rodney?

The main square in downtown Wilmington is named after him.

There is a high school that anchors an entire school district in central Delaware named after him.

The oldest and most popular road race in the state is named after him. He is on the back of the Delaware State Quarter.

Who is this Caesar Rodney fellow?

Caesar Augustus Rodney was born the oldest of eight children onto a prosperous Delaware farm in 1728, worked by a platoon of slaves. In Colonial America he served in the militia during the French and Indian War, was elected Sheriff of Kent County and served on the Supreme Court in Delaware. If there was anything going on in Delaware politics in the 18th century chances are Rodney was in the middle of it. He was one of three members from Delaware sent to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1776 to debate independence from Great Britain.

It was during those debates that another Delaware delegate, George Read, unexpectedly cast his vote against independence. Rodney, who was in Dover, was suddenly needed in Philadelphia to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of independence from Delaware.

Suffering from cancer and tasked with riding 80 miles through a dark and stormy night Rodney stopped only to change horses, or get into a carriage (the exact history is as muddy as the roads that night). Either way he made it to Philadelphia, caked in hon18

est-to-goodness Delaware slop and went straight to Carpenter’s Hall without changing his riding breeches to cast Delaware’s lot with the rebels. And for that he is Delaware’s greatest hero.

That cancer, by the way, disfigured Rodney’s face and there are no known likenesses of him to survive. John Adams, no noted looker himself, described Rodney as “the oddest looking man in the world.” So the image of Rodney on horseback is from sculptor James Edward Kelly’s imagination. A statue of Caesar Rodney also represents Delaware in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. Visitors will be excused for thinking he looks a heckuva lot like Thomas Jefferson there.

Another historic name you will encounter in Delaware is John Dickinson. He has a Delaware high school named for him, a dorm complex at the University of Delaware named for him (so does Caesar Rodney) and a college named for him in Pennsylvania. Dickinson was known as the “Penman of the Revolution” for his passionate writings in support of separation from Great Britain and he served as President of Pennsylvania when there was such a thing. Dickinson was one of the wealthiest planters in the American colonies and he owned an expansive mansion south of Dover, which is open to the public today. But John Dickinson wasn’t a Delawarean. He wasn’t a Pennsylvanian either. He was born in Maryland.

One historic name you probably won’t hear often in the First State is Oliver Evans, who may well have been the most influential Delawarean ever. With the proper press agent Evans might now be known as the Thomas Edison of the 18th century. He improved high-pressure steam engines, invented an automated flour mill with conveyor belts and Archimedean screws, and did pioneering work in refrigeration. In 1807 his Mars Iron Works constructed the world’s first steam river dredge and he predicted the coming of steam locomotives but couldn’t raise enough money to build his own. The Newport-born Evans did more than anyone else to kickstart mechanized American industry before his death in 1819. Pity hardly anyone knows his name two hundred years later.

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What’s Up With...the Most Haunted Places in Delaware?

Alarms raised by the War of 1812 sent barges laden with thousands of bricks to a marshy spit of land in the middle of the Delaware River called Pea Patch Island to build a defensive fort. Its name trips back to Colonial days when a boat hauling peas ran aground on the 178acre mud flat spilling its cargo and inadvertently sowing a pea patch.

Design flaws and fires and planning blunders delayed actual completion until 1859, by which time any foreign threat to Philadelphia had long since passed.

Instead Fort Delaware, armed with 131 guns, became a prison during the Civil War. As prison camps went, it was far from notorious. But it was still overcrowded, dank and unsanitary with good food always in short supply. In its three years of operation some 33,000 enemy Confederates were detained inside its thick brick walls. About 3,000 died, mostly of disease, along with 109 Union soldiers and a few dozen civilians who worked in the camp.

Clearly this would be fertile ground for paranormal investigators. Most famously a female spirit dressed in a Civil War-era frock has been spotted ambling through the walls in the Officer’s Kitchen. The Sci-Fi Channel’s Ghost Hunters series has combed Pea Patch Island twice and aired a live spook search at Fort Delaware on Halloween in 2008. Even British television showed up to poke around the spooky dark brick cells (there is no electricity on the island) for their series, Most Haunted.

You can pack up your EMF Meter, Full Spectrum Cams, EVP Recorder, TriField Meter and Laser Grid to make your own supernatural hunt on special Fort Delaware ghost tours scheduled during Halloween season.

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At the head of the list of Delaware’s haunted houses is the Governor’s Mansion in Dover itself. Officially called Woodburn, the spiffy Georgian brick mansion was erected sometime around 1798. During the Antebellum era it was a known safe house on the Underground Railroad, harboring escaped slaves. Since 1965 it has done duty as the official residence of the Governor of Delaware.

Strange sightings and sounds have been reported in and around Woodburn since at least 1815 when a Methodist preacher was interrupted by a female apparition during a breakfast blessing. Governors and elected officials have reported ghostly goings-on over the years.

One of the ghoulish troublemakers could be Patty Cannon. Cannon (not a native Delawarean) is not only the state’s most notorious criminal from the 1800s but she was called “the wickedest woman in America.”

She earned her unsavory sobriquet by supposedly leading a gang who kidnapped free blacks on the Delmarva Peninsula and sold them into slavery in the South. Cannon and her henchmen operated for years, partly due to enforcement indifference and partly due to her widespread reputation for cutthroat violence.

In 1829 a tenant farmer plowed up the remains of four bodies on land owned by Cannon in Sussex County. She was indicted for murder and thrown in jail. Then well into her sixties, Cannon died in her cell, either from natural causes or by intentionally ingesting poison.

She was buried in the jailyard but the graves were moved in the early 1900s to clear room for a parking lot. Her head, however, didn’t make it to the new burial ground with the rest of her bones. Now infamous after the publication of pamphlets and books about her evil exploits, Patty Cannon’s skull was passed around for display before landing in the Dover Public Library in 1961 where it was stored in a crimson red hat box. That is bound to make any spirit restless.

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What’s Up With..the Lighthouse in the Middle of the Neighborhood?

For a tiny state Delaware boasts 381 miles of shoreline - four times its cartographic length. At the water’s edge are sandy beaches, salty estuaries, reedy marshes and tidal flats. But no dramatic rocky coast to hang a rain-pelted lighthouse on to inspire a good Gothic romance. That does not mean the First State is lacking in lively lighthouse lore.

Delaware’s first - and most spectacular - beacon was the Cape Henlopen Light. When stone sailed down from the Brandywine River in 1767 was assembled to create the tower at the mouth of Delaware Bay it was only the sixth lighthouse to be built in the American colonies. To better amplify its light the tower was perched 46 feet above sea level on Cape Henlopen’s Great Dune. As great as the dune was, however, it was shifting away from the sea at some five feet a year.

By the 1920s the Cape Henlopen Light was facing imminent destruction. The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1924 and photographers dutifully recorded the lethal encroaching erosion. The end after more than 150 years of service came in April of 1926 when the 69-foot tower collapsed into the surf. Some of the old stone ended up on local houses as chimneys or fireplaces. When you drive into Rehoboth Beach that little lighthouse in the roundabout is a replica of the historic Cape Henlopen Light.

Many of the guiding beacons along the Delaware River are delivered by range lights on shore that look like Oklahoma oil field derricks. The state’s most unusual range light, however, shines from a 100-foot high square concrete tower smack in the middle of Bellefonte, a small residential town between Wilmington and Claymont.

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The Marcus Hook Range Light was erected in 1920 and today barely peeks above the trees in its leafy neighborhood.

The two-story brick American Foursquare house next door was the keeper’s quarters. It has been boarded up since the Coast Guard stopped using it in 2004 but before that it was mostly the home of longtime keeper Leslie Van Stavern Millar and his large family. An expert mechanical troubleshooter, Millar eventually was put in charge of all navigation between Philadelphia and the Delaware Bay. The continuous red light, computerized now, still shines day and night from the Marcus Hook Range Light. But when you go looking for it don’t expect to see the tower until you are standing right in front of it. Not that the range light is trying to hide - it resides on Lighthouse Road after all.

Out in Delaware Bay the state’s most prominent light is the Fourteen Foot Bank, erected on a metal caisson atop a submerged shoal in 1888. The lantern tower rests atop a two-story wooden keeper’s house. In 2007 the lighthouse was sold to a Carson City, Nevada lawyer named Michael Gabriel for $200,000. Gabriel eyed the lighthouse as the base for making the world’s first beer brewed with seawater, following an on-site desalination process. Gabriel also purchased Bloody Point Lighthouse in Maryland and was planning to establish a chain of lighthouse microbreweries along the East Coast but to date no suds have begun flowing from the old guardians of the shipping lanes.

You can see Delaware’s most classic existing shoreline lighthouse all the way at the bottom of the state on Fenwick Island, so close to Maryland its shadow falls across the state line. The 87-foot tower was constructed of two brick cylinders, one inside the other, in 1859 and designed to protect mariners from the tricky Fenwick Shoals six miles offshore. The Fenwick Island Lighthouse Station went dark in 1978 but locals and visitors alike raised such a ruckus that the Coast Guard gave the facility to the State of Delaware and a new electric light was turned on in 1982. Both the lighthouse and the Gothic-flavored keeper’s house are open for tours from May to September.

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What’s Up With...The Canal?

You won’t be in Delaware long before you hear mention of “above the canal” and “below the canal.” That would be the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, a 14-mile long, 450-foot wide ditch dredged to a depth of 35 feet that is one of only two vitally commercial sea-level canals in the United States.

Money men were dreaming of a water link between the Delaware River and the Chesapeake Bay back before there was a Delaware.

Construction finally got underway in 1822 and with 2,600 men digging and hauling dirt to create the waterway opened for business in 1829. The shipping distance between Philadelphia and Baltimore was immediately shortened by 300 miles and an often perilous ocean leg was eliminated from the voyage. And from that time on it has not been possible to travel the 96-mile length of Delaware without using a bridge (currently four highway crossings in Delaware and one in Maryland).

So for almost 200 years there has been a Delaware “above the canal” and a Delaware “below the canal.”

North of the canal is essentially Wilmington and most of the state’s people and south of the canal has been mostly cropland, often tagged as Slower Delaware. In recent years the Wilmington suburbs have crept across the watery divide and the cultural distinctions between the two regions have blurred.

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What’s Up With...the Ebright Azimuth?

The Ebright Azimuth marks the highest point in Delaware at 447.85 feet above sea level. Of all the states, only Florida has a lower roof than the First State. To stand on the Delaware highpoint go to Concord High School in northern Delaware and continue past the back parking lot on Ebright Road (all this land was once owned by James and Grant Ebright) to Ramblewood Drive at the entrance to Dartmouth Woods. Across the street you can find the National Geodetic Survey marker in the ground.

And don’t believe all that malarkey about Kansas being the flattest state in the union. Delaware has the lowest mean elevation of any state. If anyplace should be compared to a pancake it is Delaware, not Kansas. The highest elevation in Kansas is 4,041 feet. A real Delawarean would get a nosebleed there.

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What’s Up With...All the Banks in Delaware?

Throughout the 1800s a company wishing to incorporate had to obtain a special act by its state legislature. In 1899 Delaware adopted a general incorporation act that simplified the process and began attracting businesses across the country to come and file for incorporation. Thanks to the Delaware General Corporation Law more than half of all the publicly traded corporations in the United States are incorporated in Delaware.

In 1981 Delaware, spurred by then-governor Pierre S. du Pont, moved again to grease the skids for businesses by passing the Financial Center Development Act. The legislation was passed with modest ambitions - to lure two New York state banks to bring their credit card operations to Delaware with at least 1,000 employees in tow. Instead the law ignited the rise of interstate banking and more than 30 banks set up headquarters in Delaware.

The state has been a center for finance ever since and ironically today Delaware is known more for its banking industry than the governor’s family chemical business.

And while we are talking money, your Roth IRA is named for William Roth, a five-term United States Senator from Delaware who helped shepherd the retirement savings program through Congress in 1997. Roth was born in Montana; he did not arrive in Delaware until he was 33 years old.

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Living in Delaware

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Celebrating in Delaware Dover Days The Green Dover May What began as a small house and garden tour in 1933 is now one of Delaware’s oldest and most popular festivals. Delaware’s Colonial heritage courses through all the events during the two-day celebration, including hundreds of schoolchilren attired in their finest 18th century attire dancing around a Maypole. Delaware isn’t a great state for grand parades but you’ll find one of the best during Dover Days.

Winterthur Point-to-Point Steeplechase Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library Winterthur May This is Delaware’s answer to the Kentucky Derby where the common folk don fancy hats and come to tailgate with high society. The centerpiece of the day is the steeplechase races that ramble over the rolling hills of the one-time 1,000-acre private preserve of Henry Francis du Pont. Since the horses are often out of sight during the two and three-mile chases people watching is as big an attraction as the races. Celebrants will want to arrive early so as not to miss the preliminary events, chief among them being the exquisite Parade of Antique Carriages.

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Hagley Fireworks Hagley Museum and Library Wilmington June It makes sense that the best fireworks display in Delaware would take place on the grounds of Hagley Museum, the site of the original gunpowder works upon which the du Pont family fortune was built.

The pyrotechnics, which are set to music and feature a different narrative each year, are not open to the public but anyone can become a member of the museum for about $30 a year and gain the right to purchase tickets. The membership includes free admission to the museum all year. If you only use it to experience the best springtime stroll in Delaware - along the Brandywine River from the Visitor Center in Henry Clay Mill to the restored steam engine - the membership will more than pay for itself.

Clifford Brown Jazz Festival Rodney Square Wilmington June Wilmington-born Clifford Brown was only 25 years old in 1956 when a car he was riding in missed a turn on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, smashed through the guardrail and plunged down a 75-foot embankment. All the occupants in Brown’s 1955 Buick were killed.

Brown, who had started blowing a trumpet when he was 12 years old, had already toured Europe and Africa and appeared on a score of recordings. He was acclaimed as the most brilliant jazz trumpeter of his era. The promise of the life that ended on that rainy night on the way to a gig in Chicago has been celebrated in Wilmington every year since 1989. It is reported to be the largest free jazz festival on the East Coast.

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St. Anthony’s Italian Festival North Dupont Street Wilmington June The legacy of the Italian-American community in Delaware dates back to the 19th century when skilled stonemasons were recruited to assemble the sone walls that still criss-cross the rolling hills of northern Delaware. The immigrants settled in an enclave of Wilmington that came to be known as Little Italy. Many of the Old World transplants and their descendants have scattered from the area but their traditions are still celebrated in this much-anticipated seven-day festival with Italian delicacies served up in outdoor cafes, live entertainment on five stages and a carnival.

Delmarva Chicken Festival various locales June This two-day event rotates among Delaware and Maryland towns celebrating the meat chicken that is the cash cow, so to speak, of Delaware agriculture. In past years Sussex County has ranked first among all American counties in meat chicken production; annually the state produces over 200,000,000 meat chickens with an average live weight of 7.2 pounds. The festival has been held every year since 1948 and the highlight is the three tons of chicken cooked up in the world’s largest frying pan. The ten-foot around pan can fry up 800 chicken quarters in a firing.

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Firefly Music Festival The Woodlands of Dover International Speedway Dover Summer The newest festival to jump on the Delaware event calendar is the Firefly Music Festival which burst on the scene in 2012, brashly announcing itself as “The East Coast’s Premier Music Experience.” It largely lived up to the bluster with 30,000 attendees from 48 states enjoying a mix of national acts and emerging artists for three days on four stages. The Firefly has only grown from there with seven stages and 100 artists spread across four days. In between concerts, festival goers can camp on the grounds, enjoy free video games in an arcade tent and browse in The Vineyard, an onsite wine bar.

Delaware State Fair State Fairgrounds Harrington July The Delaware State Fair began life as the Kent and Sussex County Fair in 1920. Boosters in Harrington purchased 30 acres of land for $6,000 and staked out a racetrack and grandstand. Almost 100 years later the fairgrounds are in the same spot, although they have grown to 300 acres. Staged over a week in mid-July the Delaware State Fair attracts a quarter-million people over seven days to enjoy national headlining musical acts, carnival rides and a rodeo. At its core, however, the state fair remains a showcase for the Delaware’s agriculture and livestock communities.

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Steamin’ Days Auburn Heights Preserve Yorklyn First Sunday of the month, June through November The Marshall family ran a mill producing vulcanized fiber in the late 19th century. Inspired by the bellowing steam engines in the plant young T. Clarence Marshall constructed a steam automobile when he was 19 years old. Later he got a dealership selling Stanley Steamers, the leading steam-powered cars of the early 20th century. Marshall also assembled the world’s largest fleet of operating Staney steam cars. After World War II he constructed a 1/8-scale steam railroad on the family estate at Auburn Heights. On Steamin’ Days at the Marshall Steam Museum the public can enjoy free rides on the Stanley Steamers and the railroad and tour the 1897 Queen Anne-style stone mansion.

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Sea Witch Halloween and Fiddlers’ Festival Rehoboth Beach October Founded in 1990, this festival boasts the most imaginative parades in Delaware. If the procession of costumes down Rehoboth Avenue to the bandstand on Saturday doesn’t grab you stick around for the costumed pet parade on Sunday. Well over 100,000 people turn out for three days of scarecrow-making, broom tossing contests, fiddling competitions, pumpkin margaritas and a hunt for the elusive Sea Witch.

World Championship Punkin Chunkin Bridgeville November Punkin Chunkin started in 1986 in the manner of all great contests - with a group of guys talking smack about throwing pumpkins. The winning toss that year came from a rickety catapult that broke on every attempt - the furthest it propelled a pumpkin was 126 feet. Today Punkin Chunkin has evolved into Delaware’s premier festival with more than 100 teams vying to be Lord of the Gourd. The competition is televised on the Science Channel and pumpkins are launched from air cannons for distances of nearly one mile. The event takes place the first full weekend after Halloween and includes a pumpkin cooking contest, entertainment, amusement rides and the Miss Punkin Chunkin pageant.

Return Day The Circle Georgetown November Since 1792 the Circle has been the site of Return Day, a uniquely Delaware tradition. The State Law in 1791 dictating the removal of the Sussex County Seat from Lewes required all votes to be cast in the new County Seat of Georgetown on election day. The same voters would “return” two days later to hear the results - hence the name Return Day. Through the years, even as the oral declaration was rendered obsolete, Return Day morphed into a cookout where heated

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political differences would melt away in the barbecue sauce. In the tradition of the 19th century food booths, ox roast sandwiches are distributed to the throngs attending Return Day at no charge.

Christmas in Odessa Main Street Odessa December This village was settled by the Dutch back in the 1600s and eventually came to be known as Cantwell’s Bridge after the land was acquired by the Cantwell family. In the 1800s it was briefly a major river port, some years shipping out 400,000 bushels of grain. The coming of the railroads doomed Cantwell’s Bridge and in a desperate attempt to restore its relevancy the citizens voted to re-name the town Odessa, after the great Russian grain port. It was futile and the town fell into

decay. H. Rodney Sharp kick-started restoration efforts in the 1930s and for the past 50 years the town’s historic private houses and public buildings have opened for a self-guided walking tour one day during the Christmas season.

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Cheering in Delaware Most Delawareans direct their sporting passions to teams in neighboring Philadelphia or Baltimore. The closest thing to a statewide sports mania is the University of Delaware football team. When Delaware Stadium fills with 22,000 fans on a fall Saturday afternoon it becomes the fourth largest city in the state. On October 26, 1889 a game eleven representing Delaware College, with all of 68 students, was demolished by the Delaware Field Club 74-0. The University of Delaware had played its first football game.

Things have improved markedly since then. There have been national championships and three College Football Hall of Fame coaches - Bill Murray, Dave Nelson and Tubby Raymond - who guided the Blue Hens for over half a century. If you want to build your Delaware sports cred, talk about the unique Winged-T offense invented by Nelson and honed to perfection by Raymond that powered the University of Delaware to national prominence.

The only other school in Delaware to play at the same level as the Blue Hens is Delaware State University in Dover. The Hornets have long been overshadowed and ignored and the two never met on the field until they were matched in an NCAA playoff game in 2007.

Delaware won that first meeting and since then the two schools have begun playing on a more-or-less regular basis. So far the University of Delaware has won all four regular season games against Delaware State in what has become known as The Route 1 Rivalry for the First State Cup. For fans of Division III football Wesley College of Dover has emerged as a national power; the Wolverines have not lost more than two games in a season since 2004 and have repeatedly advanced as far as the semi-finals in the national tournament.

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Professional sports in Delaware means minor league baseball and the Wilmington Blue Rocks, although no one leaves Judy Johnson Field at Daniel S. Frawley Stadium much caring whether the home team won or lost. Today’s Blue Rocks - the name refers to the hue of granite once mined along the Brandywine River - began playing in 1993. It is the second goround for the Blue Rocks, who first played in Wilmington from 1940 until 1952 as a feeder team for the Philadelphia Phillies.

The biggest cheers in Delaware rise above the roar of NASCAR engines.

Dover Downs opened in 1969 as America’s first multi-purpose sports complex. The busy agenda called for thoroughbred and standardbred racing on the interior 5/8 mile oval and world-class auto racing on the outside one-mile track. For auto racing Dover Downs boasted a new design principle - “variable degree,” which promoted a smooth transition from straights to high-banked turns that allowed drivers to reach unheard of speeds on the one-mile lap. Hence the Dover track’s nickname: “The Monster Mile.”

Richard Petty christened the new speedway for NASCAR racing with a victory in the Mason-Dixon 300 in 1969. “The King” averaged 115.772 mph for the 300 laps and the win was the first of seven trips under the checkered flag for Petty at Dover - only Jimmie Johnson with eight has won more. Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran the fastest qualifying lap in track history in 2013 with a speed of 161.849 mph.

Since 1971 Dover International Speedway has hosted two NASCAR Winston Cup stock car races each year. The two race weekends are by far the largest spectator sporting events in Delaware; seating in 2001 at Dover Downs expanded to 135,000. When you go, get access to the Monster Bridge over Turn 3, the only structure like it in NASCAR. When the race rumbles beneath you it becomes obvious why the Bridge is billed as the “Most Exciting Seat in Sports.”

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Driving in Delaware The first thing to know about getting around in Delaware is to stop studying maps and start learning street names. Route numbers just don’t mean much to drivers in northern Delaware. Do your own test.

Take Naamans Road (Route 92) and Kirkwood Highway (Route 2), two of the most heavily-traveled roads in the state. Start asking your new neighbors what the route numbers are for those roads and see how many people you have to stop before you get more than a blank stare.

And you will have to get your driving gloves around the “Pikes” in Delaware. A pike is a remnant of early America when private wagon roads were blocked by a pole where a toll could be extracted. When the pike was turned, the traveler could continue on his way. Northern Delaware is loaded with these old pike roads that led to faraway towns so there is a Philadelphia Pike (Route 13), a Lancaster Pike (Route 48), an Old Baltimore Pike (several route numbers), a Kennett Pike (Route 52) that goes to Kennett Square and a Concord Pike (Route 202) that only goes to the Pennsylvania state line at Concordville where it then becomes Wilmington Pike. Got all that?

The most despised road in Delaware - at least by out-of-staters - is the 11.2 miles of I-95 through the First State called the Delaware

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Turnpike. With a toll of $4.00 the road, which is also known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway, is the most expensive toll road in the United States based on a cost-per-mile average. Delawareans never need to pay the toll when traveling on I-95 inside the state but to escape to the south requires a trip through the toll booth at the Maryland state line. There are websites devoted on how to beat the toll (right on Route 896, left on Route 4, left on Elkton Road) if the extra cost of gas is more important to you than ponying up the road usage fee.

At one other end of the Delaware Turnpike no one complains about the toll for the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Four dollars seems like a fair price to cross two miles of the Delaware River. If you are a new resident of Delaware and want to brag on the Delaware Memorial Bridge, go ahead. The twin suspension bridges are the second longest in the world; the first span opened in 1951. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 million vehicles cross the river here every year.

The most famous road in Delaware is the Dupont Highway (yes, for those keeping track, that is the third way to spell Dupont in Delaware). In 1908 Thomas Coleman du Pont, who was president of the family business at the time, sketched out a plan for a divided highway that would stretch the entire length of the state of Delaware with separate lanes for automobiles, trolley lines and horse-drawn vehicles. He poured a good chunk of his personal fortune into the project, declaring that rather than building a monument to the sky like others were doing, he was laying his on the ground. Or something like that.

A two-lane ribbon of pavement covering 103.69 miles from the Pennsylvania border at Marcus Hook to the Maryland border at Delmar was ready for traffic in 1924. By that time the visions of trolleys and horse-drawn surreys had disappeared and were replaced with plans for additional automobile lanes. While providing Delaware

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with the first divided highway in the world it wasn’t a bad idea for the du Ponts to be promoting automobile usage since the company was the biggest shareholder in General Motors at the time.

With the coming of the United States Numbered Highway System the Dupont Highway became US 13 and was known interchangeably as both by Delawareans for decades. Route 13 kept growing into a multi-state route when it was extended all the way down the Delmarva Peninsula through the Eastern Shores of Maryland and Virginia. As the Delaware beaches developed as resort destinations for motorists after World War II a Route 113 spur was directed their way and then came a high-speed toll road, Delaware Route 1, that siphoned much of the traffic off the Dupont Highway. But the world’s first divided highway can still be driven today, passing through the same towns that welcomed it a century ago.

The best scenic drive in Delaware is the Route 9 Coastal Heritage Byway that winds 52 miles from the brick-paved 18th century Colonial streets of New Castle to the ultra-modern warcraft on display at the Dover Air Force Base. Along the way the two-lane road traipses through the largest preserved coastal marshland on the East Coast.

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in the heart of the great Atlantic Flyway supports 278 species of birds. Along Route 9 watermen have lived for generations trapping muskrat and harvesting the bounty of the Delaware Bay. Their tale is told in the timeless town of Port Penn.

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Eating in Delaware Philadelphia has its cheesesteaks and Tastykakes, Maryland has its blue crabs and Delaware has its...? Well, the modern American broiler industry was born in lower Delaware and half the state’s agricultural income is tied to poultry but there is no go-to Delaware recipe for cooking the birds. Delaware may not have a signature food but it does have its share of mandatory destinations for foodies.

Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop many locations (original in Wilmington at 510 North Union Street) If you were looking around Wilmington’s Little Italy section in 1976 for a business to start, sandwich shop would probably have not been at the top of your list - or even on your list at all. There was already a sub shop on every corner. But Lois Margolet had a plan.

She would sell her made-to-order sandwiches with fresh roasted, pulled turkey. She bought a boarded-up building on North Union Street and moved in upstairs. Every night she and her brother Alan cooked a fresh turkey for the day’s sandwiches. Eventually she was cooking a dozen turkeys every night. Franchises were sold to family members and Capriotti’s turkey subs are now available in 14 states, winning awards wherever they land.

Delaware favorite - The Bobbie® with homemade turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and mayo.

Casapulla’s Elsmere Steak Shop 514 Junction Street Elsmere There are family businesses and there is Casapulla’s. Luigi Casapulla bought a small neighborhood grocery store in 1956 and to kickstart the business he started selling subs and steaks and a Delaware institution was born. Through the years 40

all nine Casapulla children and all 12 grandchildren worked behind the counter. There are still Casapullas manning the store today, folding the meats and cheese over top of the fillings to keep them securely in the sandwich. It is always busy in the shop so you will have time to study the snack foods and candies on the shelves that look like they belong in a museum.

Delaware favorite - Italian Sub. Charcoal Pit 2600 Concord Pike Wilmington When the Charcoal Pit opened in 1956 it was surrounded by farmland and you could sit outside and still count the cars going by out on Concord Pike one by one. Inside were four tiny tables and counter service. Today there is seating for 115 but the “Pit� still looks like a souvenir of the 1950s, right down to the juke boxes in the booths.

Fresh Angus beef patties are still seared on an open flame from the gas grill set out for all to see. Ice cream creations are named for the local high schools with flavors and toppings nominally tied to school colors. Or toss your allegiances to the wind and order up the 20scoop Kitchen Sink. There are now other Charcoal Pit locations in Delaware but the Original is still the must-eat destination. And bring cash sine the Pit doesn’t recognize its fellow creation of the 1950sthe plasti credit card.

Delaware favorite - 8-oz Charbroiled Hamburger, cooked to order.

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Green Room Hotel du Pont 11th & Market streets Wilmington When the occasion in Delaware calls for dark oak paneling, shimmering draperies and crisp table linens the choice for generations has been the Green Room, the signature restaurant of the Hotel du Pont.

The hotel was added to the Italian Renaissance DuPont Building on Rodney Square in 1913 as Wilmington’s answer to the elegant hostels of bigger towns. As might be expected, French cuisine is on the menu. The Green Room was awarded the Four-Diamond AAA Award every year for 28 straight years.

Delaware favorite - Sunday brunch from 11:30 until 1:00.

Grotto Pizza many locations It really wasn’t that long ago that people didn’t eat pizza at the beach. It took a brother, his sister and her husband to change all that.

The year was 1960. Dominick Pulieri and Mary Jean and Joe Paglianite drove down to the Delaware beaches from their native Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania to open a small take-out stand on Rehoboth Avenue. Slices were 20 cents and an entire pie cost $1.60. But missionary work was their biggest job since most beachgoers had never eaten pizza. Pulieri recruited enough customers that he came back the next summer and the summer after that. In 1963 Grotto Pizza opened a second location on the boardwalk. Grotto remained a seasonal business, however, until 1974 as Pulieri taught science in the Smyrna Special School District. For years a Grotto’s slice remained a treat reserved for beach trips but now there are 17 restaurants throughout the state.

Delaware favorite - The Baker’s Choice.

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Helen’s Famous Sausage House 4866 South Dupont Highway Smyrna Helen’s opened in 1983 and it has evolved into equal parts shrine to Elvis Presley and purveyor of the best sausage in Delaware. Takeout is the order of the day here and the whitewashed landmark on the road to the beach opens at 4:00 in the morning Monday through Saturday to accommodate the hunting crowd. The now-deceased Gourmet magazine tipped off its readers to Helen’s before it breathed its last. But be warned - Helen’s closes early, especially when the pork runs out.

Delaware favorite - Jumbo Pork Chop on bread.

Woodside Farm Creamery 1310 Little Baltimore Road Hockessin This has been the Mitchell family farm since 1796 and the operation is currently in the hands of the 7th generation of Mitchells. For much of that time it was an honest-to-goodness dairy farm before the milk business got commercialized and pushed small family farms like this one to the sidelines. The dairy herd was sold in 1961 but some Jersey dairy cows were brought back to graze in 1995 and the Woodside Farm Creamery opened three years later. Since then their standard-bearing flavors of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry have all been awarded blue ribbons by the National Ice Cream Retailers Association. After Woodside closes in late October Delawareans start marking the days off on the calendar until the dairy re-opens in early April.

Delaware favorite - anything; but try Motor Oil (coffee ice cream laced with swirls of fudge and green-dyed caramel) or Bacon (African vanilla infused with real bacon bits).

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Partying in Delaware Trendy nightspots come and go but some Delaware watering holes have stood the test of time.

Bottle and Cork 1807 Highway One Dewey Beach When Harry and Ginger Shaud paid $7500 for a beach landmark called Jack’s Cafe in 1936 there wasn’t even a town there yet. They did some fixing up and re-opened as the Bottle and Cork. The biggest hit songs that year belonged to Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman and Fred Astaire. By the 1970s musical styles had changed and the Bottle and Cork was billing itself as “The Greatest Rock-n- Roll Bar in the World.” Through the years acts like Foreigner, Blondie, Dave Matthews and Matchbox 20 rocked the summer stage in Dewey. The big name acts have drifted away but the Saturday Jam at the Bottle and Cork still packs in the partiers every weekend with some of the best cover bands in the East. The beer is still served only in cans and everything is still cash only - rung up in cash registers that look like they have been in the bar for all of its 75-plus years.

Buckley’s Tavern 5812 Kennett Pike Centreville The folks at Buckley’s Tavern like to say at any given time you can see Roll Royces and Ford 150s jostling for space in their parking lot. The rambling frame building had its origins as a stagecoach stop nearly 200 years ago; the tollgate regulating traffic between Wilmington and Kennett Square was located here. It became a tavern and ice cream stand in the 1930s and has been Buckley’s since Dennis Buckley took over the operation in 1951.

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Deer Park Tavern 108 West Main Street Newark The St. Patrick Inn, a log structure, operated here as early as 1747.

George Washington may or may not have hung his hat inside.

Edgar Allen Poe may have put a curse on the building after a fall in the muddy street outside. Or he may not have. Surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon stayed here as they were staking out the disputed boundary between Pennsylvania and Delaware that would evolve into the delineation between North and South in America.

This is the kind of history the Deer Park wears.

In 1848, James S. Martin bought a large chunk of Newark - 243 acres of land for $16,000 that he called Deer Park Farm. Included on his new property was the burned-down remains of St. Patrick’s Inn. Martin had the rubble cleared and brought in the architect of his farmhouse to build a four-story brick hotel he also called Deer Park. The original structure contained 12 rooms for hire on the upper levels. Patrons could enjoy a bar, a reading room and a dining room on the ground floor. The sawdust is no longer on the floor and the recent Victorian makeover may be a tad too pretty but the Deer Park trundles on as Newark’s most famous institution.

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Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats 320 Rehoboth Avenue Rehoboth Beach Dogfish Head opened in 1995 as Delaware’s first brewpub. With three small kegs fermenting over propane burners it was also America’s smallest commercial brewery. Dogfish quickly became known for its experimental brews and in 2002 opened a state-of-the-art brewery up the road in Milton in an abandoned cannery. Today Dogfish Head can be scored in 26 states and the Rehoboth Beach brewpub also operates a microdistillery, dispensing hand-crafted spirits from a small pot still.

Kelly’s Logan House 1701 Delaware Avenue Wilmington Built in 1864, the Logan House began life as as a resort hotel hard by the Wilmington City Horse Railway Terminal, which opened the same year across the street. The hostelry takes its name from John A. Logan, a Union Army General who, among other things, instituted Memorial Day. Travelers would frequently stop by for a meal or drink and then stay for the night. Among those signing the guestbook through the years were showman Buffalo Bill Cody, pugilist John L. Sullivan and income tax dodger Al Capone. The oldest Irish bar in Delaware, the Logan House has been tabbed by Esquire magazine as one of America’s best pubs.

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Playing in Delaware In Delaware you are never more than a short drive from a quality state park where you can hike, fish, swim, play disc golf or camp.

Vehicle entrance fees are charged from March 1 to November 30 and they are double for out-of-staters so once you move to Delaware get your new new tags and license right away. For those who like to walk the dog there is no dog-friendlier state than Delaware. Save for a few beaches in the heart of the busy summer season your dog is welcome almost everywhere outdoors in the First State. Let’s look at some of the first ones you will want to visit, from north to south...

Brandywine Creek State Park Talleyville Once a du Pont family dairy farm, this is quintessential northern Delaware land with rolling hills encased by miles of hand-positioned stone walls. Delaware’s first two nature preserves are here, including a 200-year old grove of tulip poplars, the tallest tree that grows in eastern forests. Hikers will want to seek out the Rocky Run Trail on the north side of the Brandywine River that winds around the closest thing you will find to a mountain stream in Delaware. The open fields here are ideal for star gazing - mark your calendar for the park’s night sky programs.

Wilmington State Parks Wilmington William Poole Bancroft used the quickstepping Brandywine River to power his cotton mills which became the largest fabric finishing works in the world. Bancroft bought up thousands of acres of land 47

as one of America’s earliest and most fore-sighted conservationists. His land became the foundation of the city park system, much of which has recently been stitched together to create Wilmington State Parks. This includes 125-year old Brandywine Park with Delaware’s only zoo; Rockford Park and its trademark 115foot Norman-style water tower; and Alapocas Woods where 600,000 tons of “blue rocks” were quarried from the granite cliffs in the 1880s.

White Clay Creek State Park Newark The state purchased 24 acres for a modest little state park in 1968.

In 1984 the DuPont Company started donating land and today’s park has grown to 3,384 acres with another 1,253 adjoining acres across the state line in Pennsylvania. There are some 40 miles of trails for hikers; the Penndel Trail is the best streamside walk in Delaware.

Along the way you will likely bump into fly fishermen deciphering the finest trout stream in the state.

Killens Pond State Park Felton Kent County’s only state park spreads out around a 66-acre millpond that was created when the Murderkill River was dammed back in the 1700s. In this park nature lovers will experience a uniquely diverse forest area as southern species (loblolly pines, for instance) mingle at the northern edge of their range with northern species reaching their southern boundary (seven separate species of oak).

The natural wonders, such as the Murderkill River Canoe Trail, also mingle with the manmade attractions, such as the waterpark.

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Cape Henlopen State Park Lewes Delaware’s largest state park is also one of America’s oldest: in 1682 William Penn decreed that Cape Henlopen would be for “the usage of the citizens of Lewes and Sussex County.” Sand dunes are the star here - especially the massive 80-foot Great Dune. Defensive bunkers and gun emplacements were camouflaged deep in the sand and concrete observation towers were built along the shoreline to bolster America’s coastal defenses during World War II. Lookouts scanned the Atlantic Ocean for German U-boats patroling off the coast. Although the fort’s huge guns were never fired in battle an enemy submarine did surrender here. The concrete sentinels are still on the beach today and you can climb to the top of one in the park.

Trap Pond State Park Laurel Opened in 1951 as Delaware’s first state park, Trap Pond is also like no other. Here the atmospheric baldcypress swamp calls to mind the Louisiana bayou rather than the surrounding farmlands of lower Delaware. If you’ve come without your canoe, boardwalks on the Cypress Point Trail enable you to get close up views of these mysterious trees that live in water and shoot out small stumps known as “knees.

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Going to the Beach in Delaware In Delaware, it is “the beach.” In New Jersey, it is the “shore.” Residents of northern Delaware are as likely to head for the Jersey shore as they are to the Delaware beaches (the Delaware legislature officially codified the term in 2003). Over the years Delaware beach towns have each staked out their own identity: Rehoboth Beach. The granddaddy of Delaware resorts began as a Methodist camp meeting at the end of the 1800s. The town has long called itself “The Nation’s Summer Capital” for the steady stream of Washington D.C. residents who cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and line up on Route 404 to reach the salt air. The heart of the beach is the nationally recognized mile-long boardwalk stuffed with eateries and amusements.

Dewey Beach. Dewey Beach, with its 300 or so residents, has built a reputation for its lifestyle tolerance and love of good times. One of the best parties at Dewey Beach takes place over Columbus Day when thousands of rescued racing greyhounds congregate with their owners for Greyhounds Reach The Beach.

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Bethany Beach. Bethany Beach, including Fenwick Island, bills itself as the “Quiet Resort.” But even so the population swells from 1,000 to more than 15,000 in the summer. It is a beach town in miniature with a short boardwalk and a smattering of sunbleached businesses.

Delaware Seashore State Park. Miles of unspoiled Atlantic Ocean beach are preserved in Delaware Seashore State Park, just north of Bethany Beach. Sun worshipers make this the most popular park in Delaware. Long beach walks are the order of the day here; Cape Henlopen State Park is another place for quiet strolls by the surf.

Delaware beaches do not end with the Atlantic Ocean “Delaware beaches.” Explorers will find intriguing sand along the Rehoboth Bay ( James Farm Ecological Park) and Indian River Bay (Holts Landing State Park). More hidden beaches are strung along Delaware Bay north of Lewes - Broadkill Beach, Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Beach Plum Island Nature Preserve, Fowler Beach. The sand is a little rockier and the beach a little narrower but there is no better place to walk your dog, find driftwood or encounter Delaware’s favorite prehistoric relic, the horseshoe crab. The best time to spot the crabs, that can survive without eating for a year, is in May.

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Playing Golf in Delaware On Labor Day 1921 a small golfing ground opened by Porter’s Reservoir on the north end of Wilmington. For the first time in Delaware golf could be played without belonging to a private club, by just paying a daily fee. Trolley cars brought golfers to the new Rock Manor course at the foot of McKees Hill. For over 40 years it remained the only public golf to be played in Delaware. Seventy-five years after the first holes were played at Rock Manor there was still only one public course south of Smynra.

Today it would take a golfer several months of weekends to play all the public golf courses in Delaware. Rock Manor has received a facelift as it approaches its centennial. Some of the best courses - Baywood Greens, Bayside and Bear Trap Dunes - are in Sussex County. Lovers of golf history will want to check out Porky Oliver Golf Club that was once the Wilmington Country Club, the first real golf course in Delaware. The United State’s Women’s Amateur Championship was staged here in 1913. The oldstyle course with small greens and stingy fairways carries the name of the state’s greatest golfer. Ed “Porky” Oliver was born in Wilmington in 1915 and was raised in the town’s caddie yards. He went on to win 11 times on the PGA tour and was runner-up in the United States Open twice and the Masters.

Delaware has several private golf courses but none with the cachet of Bidermann Golf Club. In 1928 Henry F. du Pont, who practically invented antiquing as a pastime, commissioned Devereaux Emmet, one of America’s leading golf architects, to carve a golfing field from the undulating hills on his Winterthur estate. Emmet crafted an 18hole course from ten greens and 17 tees. The full course played to

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6480 yards; the front nine sporting steel markers, the home nine porcelain. Wide fairways reached 200 feet in some spots. It was one of the world’s best personal courses, with du Pont employing his own private professional.

In 1963, du Pont’s personal course was converted into a private club, in part “to protect the Winterthur Museum from the inroads of residential building and traffic, and to add to the beautification of its contiguous gardens.” The new members wanted to call their club “Winterthur” but du Pont considered that confusing and suggested the name “Bidermann” after James Antoine Bidermann of Switzerland who married into the du Pont family and built the estate in 1837. A half-century later Bidermann Golf Club still boasts only a couple hundred members - so few the course never requires starting times.

Another unique private club in Delaware is the DuPont Country Club that was founded in 1920 as a recreational facility for company employees. By the 1960s the club featured four 18-hole golf courses and boasted the largest private membership of any club in the world.

The DuPont Country Club has shrunk with the company, so much so that non-employees can now join. But it still maintains three courses and recently was home to the Ladies Professional Golf Association championship.

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Gambling in Delaware Gambling has been a part of the social fabric of Delaware since Colonial days when farmers would gather to wager on who had the fastest horse. Actual betting was never legal, however. In 1935 fifty “horse-minded people in the community,” as the instigators have been described, led by William du Pont Jr., helped push through Delaware’s first racing legislation. These sportsmen were not interested in making money but were just looking for a place to run their horses. That the public could come and bet a few dollars was a necessary evil. The new racing facility was designed by du Pont and named Delaware Park; it opened on June 26, 1937 on 450 acres of farmland southwest of Stanton and it was the most magnificent sporting palace ever built in Delaware.

In 1996 Delaware Park and the state’s two other racetracks, Dover Downs and Harrington Raceway, added video lottery machines to augment the flagging fortunes of the horse racing industry.

While all three tracks continue to offer live horse racing they have developed primarily into full service casinos.

Although in Delaware they are not allowed to be called casinos so their official designation is “pari-mutuel facilities with slots.”

State officials may try to sanitize its gambling activity but wagering provides Delaware’s fourth largest source of revenue so opportunities to place a bet will continue to grow. Delaware’s first Poker Room has recently opened in the Wilmington suburbs. For those who prefer their gambling without the glitz of a casino, bingo parlors operate in fire halls throughout the state - all perfectly legal since 1957.

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Politicking in Delaware Delaware is generally regarded as a “blue state,” having voted for the Democratic nominee in the last six presidential elections. But the state’s political identity has seldom been so neatly packaged. The 2012 election actually marked the first time since the 1890s that Democrats were in possession of the state’s four major offices - governor, United States Congressman and its two Senators.

Prior to the 1992 presidential race Delaware had gone Republican 18 times and Democratic 17 times in the previous 35 elections.

In fact, in that 1992 election popular Republican governor Mike Castle was being forced to step down by term limits. Rather than be relegated to the political sidelines, party leaders arranged for fivetime U.S. Congressman Tom Carper - a Democrat - to abandon Washington and stand for governor while Castle ran for Congress.

The electorate easily put the men into each other’s seats across party lines to complete the engineered “Swap.”

Regardless of party label, if painted with a broad brush Delaware is conservative fiscally and moderate socially. Progressives, when they can be found, will most likely live in northern Delaware or in some of the beach towns that have become year-round communities. Democrats and Republicans, however, can both be counted on to maintain Delaware’s reputation as a business-friendly state.

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Shopping in Delaware Yes, the signs at the border are true - Delaware is tax-free. Never again will you have to hold your hand out at the 99¢ store while the cashier fills your palm with a half-dozen coins while making change. So go crazy, get out and spend and support the economy of your new, adopted state.

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The Towns of Delaware

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The Artists’ Colony Frank Stephens, a 41-year old sculptor, and Will Price, a Philadelphia architect, had long talked of starting a utopian community dependent on the economic belief in a single tax based on land values, not what improvements the owner may make to the property.

With the financial backing of like-minded soap manufacturer Joseph Fels, 162 acres of the former Derrickson farm was purchased along Naamans Creek in northern Delaware in 1900. The little community was named Arden, after the fairytale forest in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Arden began as a summer village and many of the residents lived in tents, others erected small Arts and Crafts-inspired cottages.

None of the land could be sold; it is occupied by 99-year leases from a trust. Half of the Arden land was reserved as forests and greens for perpetuity.

Artists and craftsmen were attracted to Arden from the beginning.

Upton Sinclair, muckraking author of The Jungle that exposed the unsavory practices of the American meatpacking industry and led to the safe food movement, was a resident. After more than 100 years Arden remains a haven for arts and crafts and is known for its production of Shakespeare plays. The entire village landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Building to See Arden Craft Shop 1807 Millers Road Frank Stephens lived in Arden for about 30 years; co-founder Will Price never did but he designed a handful of buildings, including the Arden Craft Shop in 1913.

Many of the whimsical structures in the village have been added onto by residents through the years but the Craft Shop, with its half-timbering and exposed beams, retains much of Price’s vision.

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The Big City Chances are, after you move to Delaware, if you don’t work in downtown Wilmington and prefer to take your nightlife in Philadelphia you can live a long time in the First State without ever visiting the “big city” proper. Wilmington has a population of about 70,000 (less than lived there in 1900) but if you add in all the surrounding unincorporated towns and suburbs half the state’s population lives is some place called “Wilmington.”

Wilmington is one of America’s oldest cities with a pedigree that goes back to 1638 when the Swedes settled along the Christina River.

After the English took over it was named Willingtown after Thomas Willing who laid out the street grid but the name Wilmington derives not from surveyor Willing but from Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington back in England.

The city was bisected by Interstate 95 in the 1960s and has never really recovered. Officials closed off Market Street to make it a pedestrian mall to re-invigorate downtown but that was eventually abandoned and the cars are back. You can see pictures of the city’s glory days at the Delaware History Museum in a converted Woolworth’s 5 & 10 on Market Street.

Building to See Grand Opera House 818 N Market Street Cast iron enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity as a building material in the United States following the Civil War. It was easy to form into decorative facades, quick to assemble and inexpensive to create.

Seldom was cast iron used to better effect than by Baltimore architects Thomas Dixon and Charles Carson, who gave Wilmington the third-largest stage in the United States with the Masonic Hall and Opera House in 1871. In those days an “opera house” was a catchall for all sorts of live entertainment from lectures to school graduations to wrestling matches to even an occasional performance of opera. The first motion pictures screened in the city were shown here in 1896 and for most of the 20th century the Grand was operated 59

exclusively as a movie theater, run by Warner Brothers. When it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the French Second Empire-influenced structure was touted as “one of the finest remaining examples of 19th century cast iron architecture in America.” A meticulous restoration has returned the Grand Opera House to its past majesty and status as the town’s leading performance venue.

The Capital It was during the American Revolution that Dover became the capital of Delaware Colony. With the threat of British raiders along the coast the state government was shuffled from New Castle to a presumably safer location in the interior. The business of government - Dover is also the Kent County seat - propelled the settlement to its long-held status as the second city of the First State.

Shortly after sailing up the Delaware River on the Welcome in 1682 to take possession of his land, William Penn issued a directive to his chief surveyor in the counties of Kent and Sussex to lay out the town of Dover. But Penn’s instructions contained no specifications as to its exact location. The selection of the site was not made until 1694 and 60

when a courthouse was built in 1697 it was in advance of any settlement. In fact, it would be another 20 years before streets would be platted and and lots put up for sale. Penn planned a market square in the location of today’s Green, the center of charm in the town in the center of the state.

Building to See Old State House 25 the Green, east side The Old State House started with the new country in 1787 and was in service by May of 1791 when both the state and county governments settled into the Georgian-style brick building. The county moved out in 1873 and this was the state capitol exclusively until 1932 when the legislature departed for new digs a few hundred yards away. Its 140 years of continuous government service was believed to have been the nation’s longest in the same statehouse at the time.

A 1976 facelift restored the Old State House to its 18th century appearance - or at least the best guess since there were few sketches of the original building in its infancy.

The College Town The University of Delaware evolved from a boys’ school started by religious leader Francis Alison in New London, Pennsylvania in 1743. It eventually showed up in Newark but into the 1900s it was mostly a sleepy little institution known as Delaware College, housed in a small cluster of buildings. On the other side of town the Women’s College of Education began educating students in 1915. Then a fellow named Hugh Rodney Sharp got involved.

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Sharp pictured the two schools joined as one great university and since he happened to be married to the sister of the state’s wealthiest and most influential man, Pierre S. du Pont, he was in a position to make his vision come true. He persuaded his brother-in-law to buy up the land between the schools and favorite du Pont family architects and landscape designers were brought in to execute a grand plan for the new University of Delaware. That plan, with its Colonial Revival dormitories and classrooms around broad grassy lawns is still in evidence today.

For many years Newark and the University of Delaware co-existed but recent times have seen the student population explode and the school has swallowed the town. Many will tell you Main Street hasn’t had its own identity since the Stone Balloon, a landmark bar, was gutted.

Most every Delawarean can hazily remember at least one Stone Balloon story. This is a bar, after all, that Bruce Springsteen played in back in 1974.

Building to See Old College northeast corner of North College Avenue and East Main Street When it relocated to Newark and became the Newark Academy the ambitious trustees set out to establish Delaware’s first degreeconferring college. They raised money through a statewide lottery and even hired America’s most eminent architect, Charles Bulfinch of Boston, to design a building in the 1820s. For reasons unknown Bulfinch’s design was never executed and another Bostonian, Winslow Lewis, who was mostly known for creating lighthouses, came down to supervise the Newark College building, destined to be Delaware’s first classically-flavored Greek Revival structure.

It was known as “Old College” and was the school’s only facility for more than 50 years. Classes were held here, faculty and students lived

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and ate here, there were recitation rooms and also a library. Today Old College does duty as the University’s art museum.

The Colonial Town New Castle is what Williamsburg dreams it could be - an authentic Colonial town. The weathered brick buildings were raised in the 1700s, not re-created with Rockefeller money in the 1920s. Instead of actors playing blacksmiths and candlemakers like those found in Williamsburg, history in New Castle was made with real people.

William Penn spent his first night in America here. When you visit the ballroom in the Amstel House it is the same place where George Washington attended the wedding reception of Ann Van Dyke and Kensey Johns when it was reported that the Father of Our Country kissed all the pretty girls - “as is his wont.”

New Castle was founded in 1651 by the Dutch. For much of Delaware’s Colonial existence this was the capital. The Court House in the center of town, although it has burned, been reconstructed and added onto, is one of the oldest public buildings in the United States.

New Castle fell into a long decline in the 1800s, ceding its commercial dominance to Wilmington and its political importance to Dover. But the buildings of hand-formed brick remained.

The preservation movement in America began in the early 20th century and New Castle was rediscovered in the 1920s. In 1924 “A Day in Old New Castle” began a tradition of touring the town’s Colonial homes and gardens that carries on to today. New Castle is neither reconstructed or a preserved historical district; it is a fully residential town roughly five blocks wide by two blocks long. On this one day, residents open their fascinating homes for tours.

Building to See George Read II House 42 The Strand George Read was a lawyer and signer of the Declaration of Independence. His son, George Read II, was also a lawyer and followed his father as United States attorney for Delaware but he was not the 63

great achiever his dad was. In fact, he was not well liked and considered pompous. As if to prove his detractors correct, Read the Younger set out to build the largest house in Delaware in 1801.

He wanted the best of everything so even with skilled local craftsmen and abundant building materials nearby he built a wharf out front of the homesite and brought everything down, including 250,000 bricks, from Philadelphia. When the 22-room, 14,000square foot mansion was finished the total bill was $11,000 - more than $2 million today.

At the time this was a bad neighborhood; a wharf district where the Delaware River lapped right up to the edge of The Strand. Two doors down a brothel was operating. Most of the fine homes in town were built a block back on the The Green. With this house - one of the finest examples of Federal architecture in the country - the Strand became Delaware’s most fashionable address.

The Crossroads Town Middletown, located about 24 miles south of Wilmington, is an early crossroads town, an old Delaware village not existing on a navigable waterway. It was originally a tavern stop about half-way on the old cart road that extends across the peninsula between Appoquinimink Creek in Odessa and Bohemia Landing on the eastern branch of the Bohemia River in Maryland; thus the name, “Middletown.”

Middletown’s main claim to fame is that the Robin Williams-Ethan Hawke starrer, Dead Poets Society, was filmed almost entirely at St. Andrews School, a private boarding school on the edge of town. The restored Everett Theater on Main Street is one of the local buildings that took a star turn in the movie about an English teacher entranc64

ing his students with verse. Not many Hollywood film crews alight in Delaware so until something better comes along this 1989 cult favorite will reign as “Delaware’s Movie.”

Street to See North Cass Street North Cass Streets always boasted the town’s choicest real estate and now shows off two blocks of picturesque Victorian homes from the late 1800s. There are examples of Italianate, Queen Anne and Stick Style architecture on this residential street just north of Main Street.

Number 210 was the home of Benjamin Thomas Biggs, a Governor of Delaware. It was one of the first houses in the state to enjoy central heating.

The River Town As Delaware’s largest town south of Dover, Milford’s downtown has long served as the commercial center of a large agricultural community. The serpentine Mispillion River flows for 15 miles across a land distance of only seven miles before emptying into Delaware Bay, severing Milford, which was literally once a mill at a narrow ford of the river, in half.

In the 1770s, a ship building industry was already flourishing on the Mispillion River and continued to be the economic engine for Milford through World War I, bringing considerable prosperity to the town. The high point came in 1917 when the four-masted, 174foot long Albert F. Paul was launched from the William G. Abbott shipyard. When the last of the area’s giant white oaks was cut in the 1920s, the shipyards quickly went out of business, although the Mispillion ships sailed on for many years. Today the Mispillion Riverwalk reflects the modern quieter times along the river in Milford.

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Building to See Parson Thorne Mansion 501 NW Front Street Milford’s most historic property lies within a 1,750-acre Duke of York land patent called Saw Mill Range granted to Henry Bowman in 1680. The first known resident was Joseph Booth, who purchased 510 acres from the Bowman family in 1730. The center brick section of the present structure was erected by John Cullen in 1746. Reverend Syndenham Thorne, an Episcopal clergyman who was instrumental in Milford’s development, bought the property in the 1780s and is interred on the grounds. Colonel Henry Fiddeman, founder of the First National Bank of Milford, came into ownership of the mansion in 1858 and changed the Colonial Georgian architecture to Gothic Victorian, adding sharp gables and raising the roof.

The Seaport

As Delaware’s only seaport, Lewes has the dubious distinction of being the State’s target of choice in times of conflict. Captain Kidd and other pirates were frequent visitors during the 1600s; the French attempted to sack the town in 1709 and during the War of 1812 the British bombed Lewes for twenty-two hours. The Cannonball House on Front Street had a cannonball fired from a British frigate lodge in its foundation. During World War II, with Fort Miles operating at Cape Henlopen next door, a German U-boat marauding offshore surrendered at Lewes.

Blessed with an excellent harbor, Lewes is home to a large fleet of charter fishing boats and is base of the Delaware Bay and River Pilots Association, whose members guide cargo vessels into the ports of Wilmington and Philadelphia. It is also the landing point for the

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Cape May-Lewes Ferry that shuttles traffic 17 miles across the Delaware Bay. The old seafaring town still contains the houses of old ship captains. By the way, it is pronounced “Loo-iss” and not “Lose” and is believed to be one of only three places in the world that bear the name; the original English town and the Lewes River in the Yukon Territory, Canada are the others.

Building to See Zwaanendael Museum 102 Kings Highway One of Delaware’s most recognizable buildings, the Zwaanendael Museum is modeled on the old town hall in Hoorn, The Netherlands. It was from this Dutch town that David Pieterssen DeVries sailed in 1632 to lead the colony that had been established a year earlier. When he discovered the original settlement destroyed and all the pioneers murdered, he was unable to re-establish the colony’s first European outpost .

Wilmington architect William Martin designed the structure with stepped gables in 1931 to commemorate the tricentennial of the first ill-fated European settlement in Delaware. Small bricks were specially made to match the originals in Hoorn and the red and white motif carried across the exterior are the official Hoorn town colors. Artifacts in the museum depict the history of Sussex County and Lewes and include exhibits relating to the ill-fated settlement, the British bombardment of Lewes in the War of 1812, the old Cape Henlopen Lighthouse and the shipwrecked H.M.S. DeBraak, which lies at the bottom of the Delaware Bay with a treasure rumored to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Epilogue Have you got all that? Now go out and be a Delawarean.

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