December 7 – Delaware's #1!!

Posted on December 7, 2016

Delaware is #49 out of 50 in size (area).
It's #45 out of 50 in population.
It's #8 out of 50 in economies (according to a 2014 Business Insider article).

So why am I claiming that Delaware is #1?

Delaware was the first of the 13 colonies to ratify the new U.S. Constitution, on this date in 1787. So it is ranked #1 out of 50 in admission to the nation!


 And that is why one of its nicknames is “The First State.”



What else makes Delaware special?

First of all, this state is so small, it has no national parks / seashores / historic sites / monuments / whatever that are entirely inside of the state. The only parts of the National Park System that are inside Delaware are two National Historic Trails that cross many states and a National Historical Park – called First State – that includes 220 acres of woods and pastures in Delaware County, Pennsylvania!

And one of Delaware's towns, Delmar, is partly in the neighboring state of Maryland.

That spillover-the-border thing isn't that unusual in a large city like Kansas City (there's a Kansas City, Kansas, and a Kansas City, Missouri, which straddle the state border) – but it's an oddity in a really small town. In 2010, Delmar only had about 4,600 residents – so it is about the size of my old high school!

New Sweden, founded in 1638, was the first permanent colony in Delaware. As a matter of fact, the first log cabins built in the New World were built in Delaware by those Swedish settlers. At the time, Finland was part of Sweden, so those log-cabin-building settlers were actually Finns, and some people credit Finland as the original home of the log cabin, although Americans often think of it as an American icon.

And of course, Delaware has lovely beaches and sunsets...


...and Bombay Hook Wildlife Refuge. Which is a stop for migrating birds...

...a LOT of birds!


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