In August of 1905 the Wilmington Morning News sent a reporter down to Sussex County to do a story about big happenings in little Bridgeville. That writer started his article talking about famous booms from recent decades–the various gold rushes out West and oil gushers down in Texas.
How could a little crossroads town in the middle of Sussex nowhere compare?
The boom which has struck southern Delaware, and particularly Bridgeville, has not yet been heralded in the press, yet it is a boom in the true sense—while many have prospered, none have suffered.
The cause of [the] boom may be told in a few words. Bridgeville … is the largest strawberry shipping point in the world.
Built on the site of a Native American village, Bridgeville began life as a few scattered homes in the 1700s. It was a real small town by the early 1800s, then took off in the 1850s with the arrival of the railroad. By the 1870s it had six general stores and three grocery stores. Soon, the humongous H.P. Cannon & Son produce packing plant opened.
Strawberries entered the picture around this time, once farmers gained quicker access to big-city markets. Let the boom times begin.
[This year’s] crop was the largest ever gathered, and that of next spring may be even larger. There are acres and acres of the berries, yet the markets are seldom glutted, and the demand nearly always results in good prices.
The result:
Many farmers who a few years ago were struggling renters, or [tenant farmers], … today are prosperous landowners with fat bank accounts. Strawberries, coupled with thrift and energy, have brought about the transformation.
The crop for the entire season … would fill every car of a train over four miles in length.
That’s not bad for a town with a population of just 900. Saturday afternoons were crazy. Buyers came from New York, New Jersey, even New England. Farmers from the surrounding countryside rolled into town, wagons weighed down with berries, and set up makeshift sales offices in an empty lot near the railroad station that got transformed into an “auction yard” when needed.
Bridgeville train station scene
A stranger walking through the streets of Bridgeville on a Saturday afternoon … may have pointed out to him a number of well-dressed and prosperous looking men who before strawberry culture became general in Sussex County were unsuccessfully tilling the soil of others. Today, they own their farms and their bank accounts run into the thousands.
In spring and early summer, the area’s population swelled with temporary migrant workers, mostly from big cities.
Hundreds of whites and blacks from Maryland and Virginia come here to pick the berries, and they live in small shanties built by the growers on their farms. A man or woman may easily earn $1.50 a day at the work, and much of the money is spent in this town. Consequently, merchants during the height of the season are compelled to employ extra clerks. … [On some occasions], small stores have sold out almost their entire stock on a Saturday night.
Bottom line: Life in boom-times Bridgeville was quite different from what most big-city Wilmington readers in those days expected to find in western Sussex County.
Bridgeville streetscape scene
The stranger who pictures southern Delaware as a region of sandhills and scrub pines, with now and then a ramshackle farmhouse with rotting fences and unkept lawns, should visit the strawberry belt. … Instead, he will find pretty farmhouses hidden away in shady groves with fine lawns and flower beds everything pointing to prosperity.
Bridgeville is one of the prettiest towns in southern Delaware, and its appearance has been enhanced by the numerous fine dwelling which have gone up [in recent years]. … During the fruit season the town becomes a hustling, bustling center and takes on metropolitan airs. … There is every reason to believe that the boom will continue. … The strawberry belt promises to become the garden spot of Delaware.
NOTE: The photos here are in the collection of the Bridgeville Historical Society.
–posted by Jim Duffy in May 2025 for Secrets of the Eastern Shore/Whimbrel Creations LLC. Thanks so much for spending some time on this site!
