History--New Castle

In 1651, in the struggle for European hegemony in the Delaware Valley, the Dutch established Fort Casimir at New Amstel, a defensible sand spit in the Delaware River. Located downstream from the Swedish Fort Christina at what is now Wilmington, the area supported a population of native Delawareans about which we know little, except that they actively engaged the Europeans in trade and in struggles over land. In 1664, the English Duke of York, concerned with extending English control along the Atlantic coast, captured New Amstel. The English rebuilt the fort, established a colonial court at the renamed New Castle, resurveyed the streets, granted properties, drained marshes and built dykes to prevent flooding, and rebuilt the town. The result muted the town’s military character, but retained its eclectic look and population, comprised of Swedes, Dutch, Finns, French, and English settlers.

After 1682, during the Penn proprietorship, New Castle was transformed into a mercantile and governmental center. Throughout the colonial era, the town’s prominence as Delaware’s capital coupled with its increasing importance as a commercial transport center for a thriving agricultural region engendered flurries of building activity. Political power shifted to the south with the move of the state capital to Dover, but New Castle remained the county seat and a flourishing, if local, economic center in the early 19th century.

In 1824, a fire devastated the waterfront commercial district and the homes of many prominent citizens (including the former home of George (I) and Gertrude Read and their family). The townspeople rebuilt, and courted the railroad and industry to retain a viable economic base. Within a decade, trains were delivering goods to New Castle’s port for transshipment, and industrialists constructed a locomotive factory at the south end of town. An ironworks, textile mill, and gas and water works soon followed, accompanied by the construction of a new neighborhood of worker housing.

New Castle’s industrial growth did not occur at the expense of the historical downtown, nor did the town become a major industrial city like its near neighbors Wilmington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In 1881, New Castle lost its position as county seat to Wilmington. The Pennsylvania Railroad developed port facilities at Philadelphia, bypassing the town. Completion of the Delaware Memorial Bridge in the 1950s drew other traffic away from New Castle. At the same time, processes of suburbanization transformed the surrounding countryside from a community of farms to communities of commuters. New Castle’s long and rich history now sustain it, discovered by more people as archaeologists and historians "unearth" it.