Henlopen Acres, DE

Henlopen Acres is a small Sussex County town north of Rehoboth Beach, with the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal and Sandy Bottoms waterway forming its western edge. The 2020 Census counted 139 residents. Its 216 parcels include homes, a town hall, a marina, the Henlopen Acres Beach Club, and Block W Beach, so the town reads more like a carefully bounded residential landscape than a conventional downtown.

ATTRFamartin / CC BY-SA 4.0

The land was shaped by the canal's completion in 1916 and by Colonel Wilbur S. Corkran, who bought the old farm in 1929 and began laying out a seashore residential park. His plan placed roads and homes around existing trees, terrain, and views, a pattern that still sets Henlopen Acres apart from the straight suburban grid. The Rehoboth Art League was formed here in 1938, and the private beach club dates to 1958. Henlopen Acres is small on paper, but its canal, ocean frontage, art history, and planned landscape give it a distinct corner of the Delaware coast.