Today I took the girls to the Atlantic town of Lewes (pronounced Lewis). I can’t imagine a more delightful seaside town. We passed one quaint building after another and the girls noted even more quickly than I did that the town was absolutely bathed in flowers. This is clearly a place that takes pride in both its appearance and its heritage. It possesses a fairy tale-like charm, the kind where you can imagine stepping back a century or two in time and it being exactly the same. The girls were too busy swooning at a striking number of pink houses to fully appreciate the historic aspect, but I did!
The population of Lewes hovers right around 3,000, but it swells during the summer beach season (right next door is Rehoboth Beach, known as “The Nation’s Summer Capital” due to all the Washington, D.C. visitors). Lewes’ beach technically sits at the mouth of Delaware Bay but it’s still considered an ocean resort. Lewes bills itself at the “First Town in the First State” and was first “discovered” in 1609 by Henry Hudson when he sailed up the Delaware River.
It was the first European settlement in Delaware and was originally named Zwaanendael (Valley of the Swans) when it was founded by the Dutch in 1631. Being Dutch myself, I eagerly took the girls to the Zwaanendael Museum. It was built in 1931 and modeled after the 1613 town hall in Hoorn, Holland to commemorate the then-300th anniversary of Lewes. The girls enjoyed seeing some of the Dutch history of the town, including old Dutch clothing and head pieces. 
We also stopped by the De Vries Monument, which marks the exact spot where the Dutch first settled. “Here was the cradling of a state,” said the marker. Unfortunately the first brave souls – less than three dozen of them – suffered a cultural misunderstanding with the Natives and were killed within a year. The Dutch are nothing if not persistent, however, and soon sent reinforcements. A colony eventually stuck. 
But the neatest thing about Lewes is a grand collection of historic houses and buildings, many moved by the Lewes Historical Society to an area of land deeded to a prominent resident in 1675. All had amazing character and stories. The girls got a big kick out of the 1870 railroad station privy. I loved the 1765 Cannonball House, which was hit by the British during the War of 1812 when they sailed up the Lewes canal. A cannonball still in the brick foundation shows the damage. There’s an 1850 doctor’s office, a 1790 blacksmith shop, a simple 1700 house made out of planks, several impressive 1700-era homes, an 1800 country store, and an 1898 one-room schoolhouse. We also passed by the oldest house in Delaware, which was built in 1665. So many of the really old houses have the distinctive shingles or “shakes” on their exterior walls. I love seeing them and wonder if they’re common anywhere else other than the Atlantic shores. I do know they are weather resistant and never need to be painted, a big plus for East Coast ocean dwellings subject to nor’easters.
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