Lewes: The Town That Nearly Disappeared!

If you want to go to Lewes, (pronounced Lewis) from Rehoboth Beach, it may only be 6 miles but it’s like a three day trip.  First you have to get out of town, which takes awhile.  Then you are on a very, very busy road, red lights, stop, start, stop, start and finally you get to turn right onto another very busy road.  But when you get there it’s worth every minute.  The place oozes charm and is perfectly lovely.  It sits on the Delaware Bay, with an inter-coastal waterway closer to downtown.  Lovely unassuming houses and hotels, and restaurants line the waterway.  There is a small, but delightful beach on the bay where the waves are more gentle and the slope into the water more gradual..  The houses are lovingly preserved, making the whole experience like entering a painting.  It’s absolutely splendid.  But it almost wasn’t.  

The town itself dates to, get this, 1632.  It changed hands, it burned down, it got razed, but I’m guessing its location at the shoulder where the bay meets the Atlantic made it an excellent harbor, so people kept rebuilding.  By the 1800’s it was a prosperous trading and transportation hub.  In the early nineteen hundreds up to just after World War 2 it was an honest to god fishing village and commercial fish processing site as well. 

When commercial fishing lost its economic viability and transportation shifted to other places and means, Lewesians began discussing what to do next: oil or coal processing, amusement park, housing developments or historic preservation?  A group of women, (its always a group of women), pushed hard for historic preservation and won.  

Today this small town is voted most beautiful charming small town over and over.  It’s only comprised of  a few streets of shops and restaurants, but its enough.  You can charter a fishing boat, take a boat tour of the bay, hike/bike the trail back to Rehoboth Beach, walk along the water, Walk the town looking for the historic markers on the houses that tell you how old they are and occasionally who lived there, or just hang out on the beach, eat marvelous food alllllll dayyyy long and just relax.

It’s one of our favorite towns in Delaware.  All that loveliness will seduce you and make you feel like all is right in the world.