Built in 1940. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
From the record
“Fort Miles was a United States Army World War II installation located on Cape Henlopen near Lewes, Delaware. Although funds to build the fort were approved in 1934, it was 1938 before construction began on the fort.”
Wikipedia article Fort Miles, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 136 National Register listings published here for Sussex County · listed in 2004 · category: District · built in 1940.
National Register reference number.04001076- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
38 since 2002
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 38 fires within 5 miles of Fort Miles Historic District
between 2002 and 2020, burning about 121 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 6 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
10
Debris and open burning
8
Equipment and vehicle use
6
Arson/incendiarism
6
Smoking
4
Natural
2
Recreation and ceremony
2
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Lewes, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 1997 and 2026: 12 thunderstorm wind, 6 lightning, 1 rip current, 1 heavy rain.
The reports record 1 death. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
The roof of a Drake Knoll home in Lewes was struck by lightning and started a fire. Five fire companies battled the blaze that was mainly confined to the roof. No serious injuries were reported.
A series of thunderstorms over a period of three hours produced about 1100 cloud-to-surface lightning strikes in Sussex County and Delaware Bay from 4 p.m. EDT through 7 p.m. EDT on the 16th. About ten structures were struck by lightning in and around Lewes. The worst reported property damage was the ensuing fire that occurred after a lightning strike to a Brighton Drive home. The fire damage was estimated at $50,000. The lightning strike in the Sussex East Mobile Home Park started a shed fire which spread to a home, but was quickly extinguished. Two small fires were started by lightning strikes to homes in the Eagle Point Landing Development. Another lightning strike occurred at an apartment building at the Village of Five Points development. Lightning struck a Home Depot twice on Delaware State Route 1. Lightning also struck the Furniture Galley on Delaware State Route 1 and Practically Yours on U.S. Route 9. No serious injuries were reported with any of the fires.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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