Townsend Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

From the record

“Townsend Historic District is a national historic district located at Townsend, New Castle County, Delaware. It encompasses 216 contributing buildings and 5 contributing structures in the crossroads and railroad village of Townsend.”
Wikipedia article Townsend Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 411 National Register listings published here for New Castle County · listed in 1986 · category: District.

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

The listing

Address. Roughly bounded by Gray, Ginn and South, Lattamus and Main Sts., and Commerce St. and Cannery Ln. and Railroad Ave., Townsend, 19734
When was it listed? May 1986
Category. district
Census division. Middletown-Odessa
National Register reference number. 86001029 - 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

1 since 2012

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Townsend Historic District in 2012, burning about 39 acres in total. None started naturally. None was 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
Equipment and vehicle use	1

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
5 July 2012	Equipment and vehicle use	39 acres	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named

Every fire recorded in New Castle County

Storms near this property

20 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Townsend, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 9 thunderstorm wind, 4 flood, 2 hail, 2 heavy rain. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. 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
May 2006	Lightning	Townsend	$100,000	no account filed
July 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	$1,000	A severe thunderstorm knocked down a pole in Townsend.
March 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	Multiple trees and wires blown down.
April 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	A trained spotter reported a measured wind gust of 51 knots.
April 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	Powerlines down due to thunderstorm winds.\|\|NWS Note: Some meso circulations were noted in the area, a small probability of a tornado based on radar. No direct information to suggest this.
July 2017	Flood	Townsend	-	Several fields in low-lying areas were flooded.
July 2017	Flood	Townsend	-	Caldwell Corner Road was flooded.
July 2017	Flash Flood	Townsend	-	A daycare was flooded due to high water along with several vehicles being stuck as well.
July 2017	Flood	Townsend	-	Dexter Corner road and Levels road flooded.
July 2017	Flash Flood	Townsend	-	Flash flooding on Wiggins Mill Rd near Wiggins Mill Pond.
July 2017	Flood	Townsend	-	Portions of Green Giant Road washed out.
July 2017	Heavy Rain	Townsend	-	Just over two and a half inches of rain fell.
August 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	Numerous Trees and Wires down in and near Townsend.
August 2016	Heavy Rain	Townsend	-	Heavy rainfall over 2 inches fell from thunderstorms.
August 2012	Hail	Townsend	-	Nickel size hail fell in Townsend.
April 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	A severe thunderstorm tore down a couple of trees in Townsend.
July 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	A severe thunderstorm tore down large tree limbs and dropped penny size hail in Townsend.
July 2007	Hail	Townsend	-	no account filed
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	no account filed
August 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Townsend	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in New Castle 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
Old Union Methodist Church	1.6 miles	1973
Arnold S. Naudain House	1.9 miles	1973
Brook Ramble	2.2 miles	1992
Homestead Hall	2.3 miles	2018
Noxontown	2.9 miles	1973
Hill Island Farm	3.1 miles	1992

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 86001029 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
New Castle County	All 411 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.