The first state to ratify the US Constitution happened to be the 49th state I visited. My time as a tourist in this state showed me two things: Small places can have a rich history. It is possible to get lost in northern Delaware. (Don’t put all your reliance into the maps distributed with tourist materials. — they leave things out– important things.)
European settlement in Delaware began with the Dutch. The Swedish attempted the next colony. The Dutch returned several years later, and finally the British established a presence and incorporated the area into William Penn’s colony. The Three Southern Counties (Delaware) separated into their own entity prior to the Revolutionary War.
Aware of a time constraint on our visit, my traveling companion and I limited our visit to Wilmington. We managed to get confused in traffic, arrive the one day a week a museum we found was closed, and actually find (thanks to some locals) the site of Fort Christina. The quality of our visit soared the next day as we toured Hagley Mills – learned a lot about black powder and the DuPont family – in mild September weather.
One of my favorite sights on the visit is below. Creek or River? The Brandywine is a local treasure.
