"16 Miles From Anywhere" - Local Brewery Becomes a Small Town Success Story
Motivated in part by the success of Dogfish Head in Milton, several craft breweries have popped up in southern Delaware over the last few years. In fact, you can now taste a different version of locally brewed beer every day for nearly a month, without ever trying the same one a second time.
Today, we’re going to feature one of these locally owned and operated southern Delaware breweries, this one located just a few miles west of the beach in the Sussex County Seat of Georgetown.
16 Mile Brewery was founded in 2009 by Georgetown natives Brett McCrea and Chad Campbell and has since achieved quite the following in the southern reaches of the nation’s First State.
Their brewery and tavern on South Bedford Street, in the heart of Sussex County, has become a gathering place of sorts. Many events are held on 16 Mile’s grounds every month, and the Greater Georgetown Chamber of Commerce’s farmer’s market now calls the brewery home during the summer and fall months.
But before we talk too much about the products offered by 16 Mile Brewery, or the community’s support of it, let’s talk a bit about the name.
What does it mean? It seems like such a strange name, after all. There's no “16 Mile” marker on the local road, no local band named “16 Mile,” seemingly no reason to tag your home town brewery with such an odd name.
Ah, but there is a reason! And if you were born and raised in Georgetown, or possibly even elsewhere in Sussex County, you know the meaning and the history behind it. In the end, it was really a brilliant choice by McCrea and Campbell, one that resonated immediately with the locals.
As many local history lovers already know, Sussex County’s original seat of government was located in Lewes, on the very eastern fringes of the county. That changed in the late 18th century after more than 900 residents of central and western Sussex generated a petition urging local leadership to move the County Seat to a more centralized location.
It was a pretty difficult drive in those days, especially if you were coming from Seaford and Laurel, or other towns in the western third of the county.
Legislators finally agreed and the Sussex County Seat was officially moved to Georgetown in 1791. And there couldn’t be a more centralized location for county government than in "Pettyjohn's Old Field," as it was originally called in documents of the time. There’s no question about that.
An author by the name of William Wade later did a little homework, took some measurements and wrote a book called “Sixteen Miles from Anywhere,” all about Georgetown.
In essence, the claim was made and affirmed that the Sussex County Seat was located “about 16 miles” from anywhere in the county. Thus the name of the book and, generations later, the name for the town’s only brewery.
Read the rest of our story on Georgetown’s 16 Mile Brewery, and take a virtual reality tour of the on-site tavern, HERE.
