National Harbor of Refuge and Delaware Breakwater Harbor Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

From the record

“The National Harbor of Refuge and Delaware Breakwater Historic District encompasses a series of seacoast breakwaters behind Cape Henlopen, Delaware, built between 1828 and 1898 to establish a shipping haven on a coastline that lacked safe harbors. The Harbor of Refuge is at the mouth of the Delaware Bay estuary where it opens into the Atlantic Ocean, at Lewes.”
Wikipedia article National Harbor of Refuge and Delaware Breakwater Harbor Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 136 National Register listings published here for Sussex County · listed in 1989 · category: District.

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

The listing

Address. Mouth of Delaware Bay at Cape Henlopen, Lewes
When was it listed? March 1989
Category. district
Census division. Lewes
National Register reference number. 89000289 - 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.

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 National Harbor of Refuge and Delaware Breakwater Harbor Historic District: 1 producer. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Magnesite. 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
	Barcroft	Magnesite	Producer	1972

Every working recorded in Sussex County

Storms near this property

20 since 1997

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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
August 1998	Rip Current	Lewes	1 killed	no account filed
August 2011	Lightning	Lewes	$75,000	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.
July 2007	Lightning	Lewes	$75,000	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.
May 2004	Lightning	Lewes	$30,000	no account filed
July 2003	Lightning	Lewes	$25,000	no account filed
July 2003	Lightning	Lewes	$25,000	no account filed
March 2026	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	Trees and wires down in Lewes. Time estimated from radar.
August 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	A severe thunderstorm knocked down a few trees in Lewes.
July 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	A mesonet site measured a wind gust of 58 mph in Lewes.
August 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	A severe thunderstorm tore down several trees in both Lewes and Rehoboth Beach. Half inch hail also fell in Rehoboth Beach.
July 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	no account filed
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	no account filed
July 2003	Lightning	Lewes	-	no account filed
August 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	no account filed
April 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	no account filed
July 2001	Heavy Rain	Lewes	-	no account filed
August 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	no account filed
June 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	no account filed
March 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	no account filed
August 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Lewes	-	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
Delaware Breakwater and Lewes Harbor	0.6 miles	1976
Lightship WLV 539	2.9 miles	1989
Hall, Col. David, House	3.0 miles	1976
Lewes Historic District	3.0 miles	1977
Lewes Presbyterian Church	3.1 miles	1977
William Russell House	3.1 miles	1977

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 89000289 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.
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.
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.