Random Factoids about Southern Delaware

Southern Delaware is the perfect playground for outdoor adventurers. The natural beauty of the area is simply captivating.  Southern Delaware has a host of beautiful state parks, miles of pristine Atlantic coastline, inland bays, tidal marshes, bay islands, rivers, gorgeous hiking and biking trails, history, charming beach and riverside towns, water sports and so much more. Shopping is a favorite pastime as well, particularly since Delaware has no sales tax. What Southern Delaware visitors will find is everything from unique boutiques lining shopper-friendly Main Streets, to countless antiques and outlet stores. The arts and entertainment scene offers visitors the opportunity to select from a diverse offering of performing and visual arts activities and venues. And culinary arts? Well, Southern Delaware is widely known as the Culinary Coast because of its incredible concentration of top notch award-winning chefs and dining establishments.

While many many know that Southern Delaware is a haven for foodies, did you know these five random facts?

1. Before becoming a state park and the jewel in the crown of Sussex County Delaware, Cape Henlopen State Park was a WWII military fort charged with protecting the entrance to the Delaware Bay. Most people are familiar with the WWII fire towers that line the Delaware coastline. Many people, however, including many regular park visitors, are unaware of the batteries and bunkers that exist beneath the dunes in Cape Henlopen State Park. The Fort Miles Historical Association is working to change that, and has created the Fort Miles Museum Complex and amassed a large collection of WWII artillery pieces and weapons.

2. According to the National Chicken Council, the United States has the largest broiler chicken industry in the world, and it all started in Southern Delaware. In 1923, Cecile Steele of Ocean View, Delaware, ordered 50 chicks from the hatchery, so she was a little surprised to receive 500. She kept them briefly in a piano box while her husband hurried up and built her a large enough shed to house them. Four months later Mrs. Steele sold the chickens for .62 cents per pound ($8.61 in 2015 dollars) and the broiler industry was born. It may take a tough man to make a tender chicken, but it took a smart, resourceful woman to create this now $70 billion industry.

3. The northernmost stand of bald cypress trees in the United States is located in Southern Delaware’s beautiful Trap Pond State Park. Interested explorers love paddling among these majestic trees. If you don’t have your own kayak or canoes, you can rent them at the park. Pontoon boat tours are available for non-paddlers, and nighttime pontoon tours are available for those who prefer their swamp visits to be a little on the eerie side.

4. Southern Delaware is a world renowned hot spot for arthropod sex and yes, it does attract a crowd. Each spring along the Delaware Bay beaches horseshoe crabs – a prehistoric species – come ashore between the full moons in May and June to do the deed. Not just a few horseshoe crabs, but over a million of them throughout the spawning season; in fact, some nightly counts in recent years have yielded nearly 200,000 crabs. Per night! The crabs are followed by legions of migrating shorebirds hungry from their travels north, who feast on the crabs’ eggs.

5. Visitors to Rehoboth Beach will find a roped off “no swimming” area just off the boardwalk south of Rehoboth Avenue. Many regular visitors are aware that the area is the site of a shipwreck, the collier Thomas Tracy that beached during a storm in 1944. What fewer people may know, though, is that the area is really sort of a shipwreck sandwich because, coincidentally, the Thomas Tracy landed right on top of a sunken barge called The Merrimac that had run aground in the same spot during a storm in 1918. So far no one has gone for the triple.

If you know of some other interesting facts about Southern Delaware, please leave a comment below.  Click the following link to read about other Random Factoid Friday destinations.