Delmarva Back Roads

  New Castle's City Administration Building, built as a bank in 1917 New Castle’s historic district is a National Historic Landmark for two reasons. First, as I shared in my first blog post on New Castle , it played important roles in Delaware and American history. Second, it has a remarkably diverse collection of historical architecture spanning over 300 years.   In my first post on New Castle, I shared a walking tour of some of New Castle’s most important buildings—what I called the essentials for any first-time visitor. In this post I’m doing a deeper dive into some of my favorite New Castle buildings in each architectural style. I’m sharing the buildings in order from oldest to newest style, rather than in the order of a walking tour, so you can see how New Castle architecture evolved. I’m starting with some buildings built before the Revolutionary War. Those buildings are in a style called Georgian, named after King George. One of my favorite Georgian houses in New Ca...

  An egret takes flight in Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge In April we visited  Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge . Like Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge , Prime Hook was established as a sanctuary for migratory birds. Prime Hook is much smaller and quieter than Bombay, making it a more peaceful experience. Unlike Bombay Hook, there’s no fee to visit. T he name Prime Hook comes from Dutch settlers who found purple beach plums here and called the area Priume Hoek, meaning Plum Point. (UPDATE 9/11/2021: Read more about beach plums here .) As this  map shows, Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge covers a ten-mile stretch of the Delaware Bayshore. But the refuge does not include the shoreline. The shoreline is occupied by Slaughter Beach , Fowler Beach, Prime Hook Beach, and Broadkill Beach . Those communities were established before Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1963. There are several access points into the wildlife refuge. The one of i...