Farm at Carpenter’s Corner southeast of Lewes

This photograph from the late 1970s shows the farm buildings at Carpenter’s Corner southeast of Lewes near where Kings Highway intersects with Route 1. Two Carpenter brothers married two sisters - their maiden name may have been Hudson - and they lived there together for decades tending a herd of dairy cattle, tilling surrounding fields, gardening for their table, living a simple Sussex County agricultural life When a transportation project eventually forked Kings Highway around the farm to connect to northbound Route 1, it separated one of the meadows where the dairy cattles fed from the main farm.

To accommodate the Carpenter dairy operation, the state built one of only two cow tunnels in Delaware beneath the western branch of Kings Highway - now known as Dartmouth Drive - so the cows could continue to access their traditional grazing ground. That tunnel remains there to this day, its entrances obscured by heavy undergrowth. Community Bank’s Lewes building parking area and Dr. Blair Jones’ dental building now occupy the property shown in this photograph.