The peninsula has a land area of nearly 6,000 square miles. There are 2000 miles of coastline for the Chesapeake Bay, 381 miles for the Delaware Bay and 150 miles coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. The highest elevation is 400 feet with most of the peninsula being at 35 feet above sea level.

Nine of Maryland’s 23 counties are located on the Delmarva Peninsula. These being the counties of Kent, Queen Anne’s, Talbot, Caroline, Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset, Worcester and a portion of Cecil County. The Virginia counties of Accomack and Northampton and the Delaware Counties of Kent, Sussex and a portion of New Castle County makes up the rest.

For the first 150 years of the English settlement the peninsula colonial borders were questioned. Maryland felt that the entire peninsula north of the Potomac parallel should be part of the Maryland Colony. The borders between Maryland and Delaware were finally established by the Surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in 1767.

The term Delmarva appears to have been first used in a commercial application. It’s documented that there was a Delmarva Heat, Light, and Refrigerating Corp. of Chincoteague, Virginia in existence in 1913. Calling the region Delmarva didn’t seem to happen until after the turn of the 20th century and perhaps as late as the 1920′s.

A major part of the Delmarva Peninsula’s economy is through agriculture, aquaculture, sports hunting and fishing, and tourism.

This was first published at 6 Things To Consider on June 27, 2009. Reprinted by permission.

Odessa was called Apequinemy when it was first settled by the Dutch in the 1660’s on a tract of land given to Alexander DeHinijossa. When the English took control of the region the DeHinijossa estate was confiscated and given to Edmund Cantwell, the first English sheriff of New Castle County.

In 1731 Richard Cantwell, Edmund’s son, erected a toll bridge across the Appoquinimink Creek. The bridge was known as Cantwell’s Bridge and the community around it took the same name. Soon the Village of Cantwell Bridge prospered as a shipping port.

The town did not want a railroad station with their ‘Iron Horses’ running through their town. A station was built in Middletown instead in 1855. Seeing that the railroad could could effect water shipping, the town leaders decided to changed the town’s name to Odessa with a goal to reach the same fame as the Ukrainian seaport. The railroad won that battle.

The town today has many preserved 18th and 19th century homes with much of the town listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Each Christmas season the town hosts a self-guided walking tour of private homes and public buildings, decorated for the holidays.

This year’s tour is on December 5, 2009. christmasinodessa.com/

© Steven G. Atkinson