A pathway through the past

Archaeological evidence, written records, and surviving structures trace this area's history from a Native American village, identified by grinding stones and broken pottery, to later European settlement and industry. Delaware had settlements as early as 12,000 years ago, and the first European explorers found the Lenni Lenape farming this land. Swedish colonists began settling here in 1638, and early documents place a Swedish grist mill on a nearby stream. After the Dutch took control of the Swedish colony in 1657 and the English took over seven years later, the land still remained with the original Swedish families for decades. In the early 19th century, the local blue stone granite became an important industry, used for breakwaters, roads, bridges, buildings, and homes, with an early large quarry west of the Philadelphia Pike giving rise to Quarryville and another quarry opening on Shellpot Creek by 1885. Near the Philadelphia Pike stands a house built by Sarah Brooks on inherited land in 1759, occupied by her until 1784, with its original log structure later covered in board siding and a blue stone granite addition added around 1800. The area also developed as a transportation corridor, with the Bellevue Quarry Company building a railway around 1881 to move stone to main rail lines, and by 1899 the Darby Line trolley crossing nearby to link Wilmington with Darby, Pennsylvania, where travelers could continue to Philadelphia. Wealthy families were acquiring country estates here even before the Civil War; in the 1880s this land formed part of State Supreme Court Justice Charles B. Lore's estate, Gevendolen, and in 1993 Delaware purchased the property from the Cauffiel family and opened it to the public as part of Bellevue State Park.

Delaware · United States