The part of Delaware on the east bank of the Delaware River

We visited yesterday Finn’s Point National Cemetery and Fort Mott State Park. These are adjacent areas near Pennsville and Salem, New Jersey, and due south of Wilmington, Delaware. They are along the east bank of the Delaware river. Fort Mott is a popular spot from which to ferry to Fort Delaware, on Pea Patch Island.

There is another adjacent piece of land of perhaps 2 square miles along the east bank of the river there that is part of Delaware, and we drove around it and looked at aerials on Google. It seems undeveloped except for some dirt roads and a large high tension line crossing the river. There were dozens of cars parked along one of the dirt roads, mostly from Virginia, with no people in sight. It left us curious about this place. Does it have a name? How does it happen to be cut off from the rest of Delaware? Is it in practice administrated by New Jersey authorities, for example for police activity? What do people do there? Why are there so many Virginia cars parked there, and where are their drivers?

There is another cut-off bit of Delaware a bit south, much smaller, and maybe other little scraps. I guess they’re all a little mysterious.

A royal decree in the 1680s gave Delaware the whole width of the Delaware river up to the mean low water mark on the New Jersey bank, within the 12-mile circle centered on New Castle. According to this local TV website Finns Point is artificial, formed by the Army Corps of Engineers using it as a dumping ground during their dredging operations. The modern legal boundary follows the old course of the river.

If you’re interested in the details try How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein, I love it, lots of fascinating stuff.

Wow, this is great stuff, I’m digging around various details now.

There’s a related issue at the west end of the arc around the top of Delaware, the “wedge”, and I have lived near it and know the geography pretty well - this is just fascinating. I feel like doing some surveying!

Thanks!!