Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Station

At Cape Henlopen, the federal government established the Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Station in 1884 to protect urban areas such as Wilmington and Philadelphia from epidemic diseases including cholera, typhus, smallpox, and bubonic plague that many European immigrants brought with them at the end of the nineteenth century. All immigrants were examined for contagious diseases, and those who showed signs of illness, as well as those suspected of contact with them, were quarantined for 10 to 60 days while others proceeded to their destinations. In its heyday, the hospital could accommodate as many as 1,650 people, and at the height of its use the station included a hospital, barracks, stables, a blacksmith shop, and buildings for bathing, disinfecting, cremation, and boat storage. By the time it closed during World War I, as many as 200,000 people had passed through the facility.

Lewes, Delaware · United States