Historic Highways
Many Washington-area birders travel to Delaware Refuges such as Bombay Hook and Prime Hook to view their concentrations of waterbirds and shorebirds in fall and spring. Many of the rural roads we travel to reach these refuges are also rich in history. Northern Delaware was an important corridor for the Underground Railroad. A portion of that network may be designated as a scenic and historic highway.
Travelers who make the journey from the Choptank River in Maryland to the Pennsylvania border will follow routes 10, 15, 9 and 299, passing more than 20 sites connected to the Underground Railroad. The landmarks include houses, churches, fields and vacant lots.One of my sisters has been working on this project and researching some of the sites for the past year."We are not pointing out one particular Underground Railroad route, but using contemporary roadways to touch on as many sites as we can to give people a sense of the passage from west to north and from the south to the north," said Debra Martin, preservation planner for the city of Wilmington.