Delaware - Day 4 - New Castle & Odessa

Lums Pond State Campground
Friday, 4 January 2018

Heavy frost this morning but we're being promised a lot of rain tonight and tomorrow.  It's the same storm system that dumped snow and rain on Texas yesterday and reached the Carolinas by early this morning.  So I decided to go do some sightseeing today while it's still not raining.

today's route

Today was old buildings day: I went to New Castle and to Odessa, both very old towns (by US standards).

New Castle
The old part of town is as photogenic as anyone could want - almost all buildings are built of brick and have been standing for 150-300 years.

Amstel House - 1730s

Dutch House (on the left) - late 1600s

public library - 1812

A relatively recent building is the sheriff's house (the attached jail has been torn down), built in the 1870s.

sheriff's residence

I included the sign (photo on right) because of information about public whippings, which continued into the 1950s.

cobblestone street

brick sidewalk

New Castle's quaintness is emphasized by the brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets.  I became convinced that this town is an unsafe place for older people to live - can you see how undulating the sidewalks are?  But while I was there I saw a number of grey-haired people going about their lives and decided I'd been wrong.

In the sidewalk photo you can see water in the background.  This is the Delaware River and New Castle's history as a vibrant shipping port began in the late 1600s.

William Penn on the Common

The sign on the left says that in 1682 the Duke of York gave William Penn the trappings of ownership: key to the fort, soil and twigs and water to symbolize the land.  Note that Penn is holding these things in the statue.  The Common is between 2nd St. (paved) and Market St. (cobblestones).

I had an odd experience looking for the Immanuel Church.  The web page for it says it's at 100 Harmony St. and I took a photo of that building.  But a block down the street, I found the actual church building at 50 Market St.  And I'm sure it's the actual building because of the signs: there's no sign on the Harmony St. building and a very definite sign on the Market St. building.

100 Harmony St.

Immanuel Church - 50 Market St.

The sign says the church was founded in 1689, and this building was built in 1701.  The clocks on the church tower, by the way, are still working and the bells chimed on the hour while I was there.

To the left of the church in my photo is the churchyard, filled with old graves.  From outside the wall I saw grave markers from the late 1700s into the 1800s, but I had the dogs with me so didn't actually go in.

a typical alleyway

brick houses on 3rd St.

Quite clearly, brick was the primary building material - even the church walls have the stucco peeling off in places, showing the bricks underneath.

One of the alleys led me back to The Strand (their name for 1st Street), which again reminded me of the shipping past.

the $10-toll bridge over the Delaware R.

New Castle fronts on the Delaware River, and its effects can be felt all over the old part of town.

Across the railroad tracks is the newer part of town, with extended shopping centers and highways.  But near the river, the history of the place makes it feel peaceful.

There are no magnolia trees in my photos, but there are plenty of them in town all the same.  I can tell I'm starting to move into the South.

Odessa
I'd heard that Odessa had several historic houses and, because it's not all that far from the campground and about 25 miles south of New Castle, I decided to stop and see. 

the left side of the house was built in the early 1700s

built in 1769

The buildings in the photo on the left are practically modern: the building on the left was a bank, built c. 1855; the one on the right was Cantwell's Tavern, aka The Brick Hotel, built c. 1822.

There are several other houses and buildings in town that date back to the 1700s but, unlike New Castle, Odessa isn't particularly attractive.  The main street is a very wide stretch of pavement with these mostly brick structures on either side.  The houses behind the main street look as if they were built in the 1800s, but are just houses.  Still, it was interesting to see the town.

Countryside
Throughout today's drive I saw quite a few horse farms - identifiable by being very large open fields, bounded by white-painted rail fences, with horses standing in them.

Most of the cemeteries I've seen so far in Delaware have been in churchyards - the area immediately next to a church - rather than in separate plots of land.  That seems a very British way of dealing with the dead.

I crossed the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal twice today on 2 different bridges (there are 6 in all).

Roth Bridge on Rt. 1

Summit Bridge

The canal completely crosses the Delmarva Peninsula - some measure the peninsula using the canal as the northern boundary - and connects the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay.  It was built and has been maintained to this day because it cuts 300 miles off the water route between Baltimore and Philadelphia.

The Summit Bridge is only a few miles south of the campground and has an odd feature.  If you enlarge the photo (both these are internet photos, by the way) you can sort of see the blue color at the left end of the bridge.  I have no idea what that's about, but I found it very disconcerting when I first approached the bridge: I'd never seen a blue bridge before.  I'm glad to see that this photo shows it because otherwise I'd think I imagined it.

The canal has a fair amount of interesting history, according to Wikipedia, but I think I'll wait to say any more about it until I get to Maryland where there's a museum dedicated to the canal.

You can tell by the length of this post that it took me a while to compose.  And then there were all the arguments I had with the formatting program to slow me down.  Anyway, I'm apologizing for being slow to post this.