Port Mahon: Desolate Remains of a Once-Thriving Port

 

Most stops on the Delaware Bayshore Byway are either towns or land preserved and managed for wildlife. Both are relatively easy to learn about. Port Mahon is neither, making it hard to piece its story together. Fortunately, wonderful people in the Delaware History/All Things Delaware Facebook group shared memories and photos that helped me understand Port Mahon's story.

 I think Port Mahon’s story began with a lighthouse near the mouth of the Mahon River built in 1831, built primarily to guide commercial oyster boats operating in this part of the bay. The lighthouse immediately faced problems: storms continually eroded the shoreline here and damaged the lighthouse. To try to keep the lighthouse on solid ground, it was moved in 1850. When the new site also eroded, a new lighthouse was built in yet a different location in 1862. When that site also eroded, a new lighthouse was again built in a new location in 1876. I found a photo of it at the Lighthouse Friends website.

1876 Mahon River Lighthouse

This lighthouse also faced shoreline erosion, and a fifth and final lighthouse was built in yet another location in 1903, this time on iron pilings instead of wood. This 1930 photo of the 1903 lighthouse is from the Lighthouse Friends website.

1903 Mahon River Lighthouse in 1930

This 1938 photo is from Delaware Archives.

1903 Mahon River Lighthouse in 1938

I found a wonderful interview of Dorothy Lynch-Morris, who grew up in the 1903 Port Mahon lighthouse, by Bob Trapani in Lighthouse Digest.

Meanwhile, Delaware’s oyster industry was centered around Port Mahon. A March 1, 2021, Facebook post by Friends of Old Dover explains that there was once an oyster shucking house, cannery, fishing shacks, and shops serving employees, oystermen, and fishermen. I’m not sure if anyone ever lived here except in the lighthouse.

UPDATE 8/20/2021: I heard from Dorothy Lynch-Morris' granddaughter Penny, who helped Bob Trapani with the Lighthouse Digest article. She shared this photo of two Port Mahon oyster men hauling a basket of oysters in the 1920.

Port Mahon oyster men in the 1920s

An oyster disease in the early 1900s that wiped out most oysters in the Delaware Bay must have affected Port Mahon. But as late as the 1960s and 1970s fishermen, oystermen, and crabbers were still working here. One of the oyster boats was the Katherine M. Lee. Port Mahon Oyster Company, owned by the Hand family and Sam Fox, still had a presence here, although oysters were shucked elsewhere.  Old Port Mahon Oyster cans periodically pop up for sale.

Port Mahon Oyster Company can 

In 1955, the lighthouse light was moved to an unmanned structure, and the lighthouse building was abandoned. Here’s a 1970 aerial photo of it from Lighthouse Friends.

Port Mahon in 1970

In the late 1970s, Port Mahon changed considerably, though the details are murky to me.

The oyster company sold the land to Delaware Technical and Community College, which was planning to use it for a marine science program. In 1979 Delaware Technical and Community College nominated the abandoned 1905 lighthouse for the National Register of Historic Places. Del Tech took a number of photos of it, ten of which are now in the Library of Congress . Here’s a photo of the abandoned lighthouse.

1905 Mahon River Lighthouse in 1979

This is one of the photos of the abandoned interior.

Interior of 1905 Mahon River lighthouse in 1979

Just five years later, the lighthouse burned in 1984, and today only the iron pilings remain.

Iron pilings of the 1905 Mahon River lighthouse

Meanwhile, the shoreline continued to erode. As you can see, by the end of its life, the 1903 lighthouse was over water. The 1970 aerial photo shows Port Mahon Road set back from the shoreline, but today the Delaware Bay runs right up to it.

Port Mahon Road edging the Delaware Bay

There is no longer any beach, except at the southern end. It was littered with horseshoe crab shells when we visited (and, boy, did they smell!), right after horseshoe crab spawning season.

Horseshoe crab shells litter the beach south of Port Mahon Road in late June

At some point the Federal government started using one of the piers to unload jet fuel for Dover Air Force Base off ships into pipes that run to storage tanks near Little Creek.

Port Mahon fuel pier

UPDATE 8/20/2021: Dorothy Lynch Morris' granddaughter Penny shared a newspaper clipping confirming that the fuel pipeline was first installed in 1957-1958:

Because Port Mahon still supplies jet fuet to Dover Air Force Base, the Federal government now maintains and periodically rebuilds the pier and the road. Large rocks called riprap have been placed along the road to protect it, but the road is still regularly damaged by flooding.

Port Mahon Road

A better solution is needed, both to provide reliable access to the jet fuel pier and boat launch and, even more important, provide horseshoe crabs and shorebirds a better shoreline habitat than a road bordered with riprap. A solution has been proposed to install offshore breakwaters to calm the waves and add dunes along the shoreline.

Today Port Mahon is part of Little Creek Wildlife Area, managed by Delaware’s Department of Natural & Wildlife Resources. The buildings are all gone. This part of Little Creek Wildlife Area is largely undeveloped except for some deer stands inland and a boat launch at the end of Port Mahon Road, on the Mahon River.

Mahon River boat launch and crab traps

We saw plenty of pilings, presumably from old docks.

Some of the old pilings along Port Mahon Road

And we saw a few docked boats.

Boats along Port Mahon Road

Remains of the cannery are supposed to be visible along the shoreline, but we didn’t see them. This was our first summertime trip along the Delaware Bayshore, and when first I jumped out of our car to take photos, I got divebombed by horseflies! (UPDATE 7/4/2021: Someone is developing an app called "Damn Fly Meter," It's basically a weather app for black flies. It tells you how bad the flies--correctly called black flies, not horseflies--are at several Delaware beaches to help you decide whether to go. Along the Delaware Bay, it works for Beach Plum Island, Broadkill Beach, and Slaughter Beach.)

So we stayed in our car with windows up for the rest of our visit, and I took what photos I could through the windows. Horseflies continued to divebomb our car!

Horsefly divebombing our car (on right)

Despite the horseflies, Port Mahon is a great place for birdwatching. It’s just south of Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, so if Bombay Hook is crowded, try here instead. Because the road runs along the water, you can birdwatch from your car. We saw an eagle and two red-winged blackbirds, but they all flew past too quickly for me to get a photo. We saw an osprey nest on one of the old lighthouse pilings.

Osprey next on Port Mahon lighthouse pilings

We also saw a great blue heron.

Great blue heron at Port Mahon

We couldn’t figure out what this bird is. (I’m sorry it’s fuzzy—it was taken through our car window with my cell phone.) If you know what it is, please let me know! (UPDATE 7/4/2021: It's an osprey. Thanks to the reader who identified it!)

Osprey (previously unknown bird) at Port Mahon

After our visit to Port Mahon, we drove to Dover for dinner. The isolation of Port Mahon is only 15 minutes from the hubbub and traffic of Dupont Highway!

Delaware State Archives have more old photos of Port Mahon here.