Ellendale, DE

Ellendale began near Morris Tavern Crossroads, then shifted east in the 1860s when families gathered around the Junction and Breakwater Railroad depot. That move set the town's pattern: rail lines, farm and forest products, and roads pointed toward the coast. By the late 1890s, two north-south railroads and an east-west Queen Anne line met in the area, with passengers and freight heading toward Philadelphia, Baltimore, Delaware's beaches, and the Chesapeake. Canning, peach processing, a button factory, and a ketchup company filled out the working map. U.S. 113 and Delaware 16 now carry the traffic that the rails once handled. Ellendale is a Sussex County crossroads with a railroad-shaped past still visible in its streets.