Portsville Lighthouse

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

From the record

“The Portsville Lighthouse was a historic house in Portsville, Sussex County, Delaware, situated along Broad Creek. The house was a folly, not a functional lighthouse, and was the oldest folly in Delaware.”
Wikipedia article Portsville Lighthouse, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 136 National Register listings published here for Sussex County · listed in 1987 · category: Building.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. N side of CR 493, Portsville, 19940
When was it listed? September 1987
Category. building
Census division. Laurel-Delmar
National Register reference number. 87001514 - 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

18 since 2005

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 18 fires within 5 miles of Portsville Lighthouse between 2005 and 2020, burning about 45 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 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
Debris and open burning	8
Equipment and vehicle use	4
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3
Misuse of fire by a minor	1
Arson/incendiarism	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	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
9 June 2011	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.5 acres	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
29 June 2011	Equipment and vehicle use	2.0 acres	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
18 June 2007	Equipment and vehicle use	2.5 acres	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
14 June 2016	Misuse of fire by a minor	under an acre	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
9 May 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
31 May 2007	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
9 April 2020	Power generation/transmission/distribution	1.3 acres	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named
21 April 2007	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service	not named

Every fire recorded in Sussex County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Portsville Lighthouse: 1 prospect. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Iron. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Barren Creek Deposits	Iron	Prospect

Every working 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
Ralph Potato House	3.8 miles	1990
Dickerson Potato House	3.8 miles	1990
Wright Potato House	4.8 miles	1990
Collins Potato House	4.8 miles	1990
Phillips Potato House	5.6 miles	1990
West Potato House	6.2 miles	1990

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 87001514 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.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.