Bethel Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

From the record

“Bethel Historic District, also known as Lewisville and Lewis' Wharf, is a national historic district located at Bethel, Sussex County, Delaware. The district includes four contributing buildings.”
Wikipedia article Bethel Historic District (Bethel, Delaware), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 136 National Register listings published here for Sussex County · listed in 1975 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service · the Wikipedia article

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 4 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. 0.4 mi. W of Laurel, Bethel, 19973
When was it listed? February 1975
Category. district
Census division. Laurel-Delmar
Architectural style. Renaissance Revival architecture
National Register reference number. 75000544 - 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

4 since 2004

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 4 fires within 5 miles of Bethel Historic District between 2004 and 2007, burning about 101 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 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
Debris and open burning	2
Arson/incendiarism	2

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
6 September 2007	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
9 July 2004	Arson/incendiarism	100 acres	Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge	WOODLAND CHURCH RD.
8 March 2006	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
23 November 2005	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named

Every fire recorded in Sussex County

Storms near this property

7 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Bethel, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 1998 and 2026: 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 heavy rain, 1 flash flood, 1 tornado. The reports record 1 injury. 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
April 2019	Tornado (EF2)	Bethel	1 hurt	A tornado traveled from Woodland Ferry Road northeast to Pepper Road. One barn was destroyed. A tree fell on a house, resulting in one injury. In addition, there was roof damage to several other homes and barns. Many trees were uprooted along the tornado path, and a few were snapped.
March 2026	Thunderstorm Wind	Bethel	-	Measured 68 mph wind gust by broadcast media meteorologist. Partial roof blown off shed. Photo provided in report. Time given in report.
June 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Bethel	-	Multiple tree branches snapped on Holly Branch Drive and Road 492A. Time estimated from radar.
June 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Bethel	-	Measured wind gust of 58 mph with tree limbs down nearby in Bethel from a microburst. Photo of tree limb down and video showing onset of microburst and severe winds provided in report.
June 2018	Flash Flood	Bethel	-	Several roads were flooded from Bethel to Laurel.
July 2017	Heavy Rain	Bethel	-	Just over three inches of rain fell.
June 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Bethel	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Sussex County

Map coverage status

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Phillips Potato House	1.7 miles	1990
Cannon's Ferry	2.1 miles	1973
Ralph Potato House	2.8 miles	1990
Dickerson Potato House	3.0 miles	1990
Wright Potato House	3.3 miles	1990
Laurel Historic District	3.6 miles	1988

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 75000544 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Sussex County	All 136 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

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.