Journey through Dewey’s rich history shared at local event
The history of Dewey Beach is rooted in Rehoboth City – no, not that Rehoboth.
During an April 26 event hosted by the town and the Dewey Beach Civic League, Dewey historian Sarah Dougherty related the history of the town from its start until 1962. Another event is being planned for the fall, focusing on the following years. Materials that are gathered will be used for displays to be created at the new town hall that is under construction.
Preserving the community’s history runs in the family, said Dougherty, who was appointed in 2016 to succeed her mother, Barbara Quillen Dougherty, who was the town’s first historian until she died in 2015.
Sarah manages Dewey Beach History & Tales, a Facebook page. She and her mother created a book by the same name in 1996.
About 100 people attended the event at the Hyatt Place hotel. Longtime residents related stories of their time growing up in Dewey, the site of joyful summer days on the beach, youthful pranks and devastating storms.
Dewey Beach is the youngest of the state’s 57 municipalities. Dougherty noted the first effort to form a community at the location of the modern Dewey Beach involved business partners trying to create Rehoboth City in 1855.
Three partners surveyed the land and each soon built the first cottages at an unnamed beach, she said. One cottage was moved twice and still stands on St. Louis Street.
The venture to create a seaside Rehoboth City failed, as the area was popular for winter sportsmen, but not for beach recreation, Dougherty said. At the time, Atlantic City, N.J., drew the beach crowd.
The Town of Dewey Beach was not incorporated until 1981.
“It was incorporated recently, but its history does go back further,” Dougherty said during a break in her presentation. “For the younger crowd … it may not be as appreciated. I definitely feel like there is high interest. People still have their own personal memories.”
In 1868, Beers Atlas of Delaware showed the name Rehoboth City being used for the first time in that type of publication, Dougherty said.
“And Rehoboth City, any time you see those words, that is Dewey Beach,” Dougherty said.
By 1907, the area was being called Dewey Beach, in honor of Admiral George Dewey, who became a national hero after his victory in the 1898 Battle of Manilla during the Spanish-American War.
Rehoboth Beach, to the north of Dewey Beach, was founded in 1873 as the Rehoboth Beach Camp Meeting Association. In 1891, 10 years after the association disbanded, the area was incorporated as Cape Henlopen City. It was renamed Rehoboth Beach two years later.
The first business in the area that later became Dewey Beach was a saloon and crude hotel that was opened in an existing building in 1870 by Lewis Tredenick. Originally called Tredenick’s, it was soon formally named the Rehoboth City Hotel.
“This is how it started,” Dougherty said to loud laughs and hoots from the audience.
“It doesn’t surprise me that the first business was a saloon,” said Diane Hanson, president of the Dewey Beach Civic League, alluding to the reputation of the community for summer parties and nightlife.
The town has a year-round population of more than 300 residents, but numbers can swell to 30,000 on summer weekends.
Longtime Dewey Beach resident Bronie Zolper said the town’s party reputation actually began fairly recently, when her neighbors rented a house one summer to the Washington Redskins in the early 1980s.
“Party city started right there,” Zolper said. “They came down in droves every weekend, the players bringing their girlfriends and their wives. And they had parties continuously, Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoons.
“One of the guys had a big, big Cadillac, and it had [steer] horns on the front of it,” she added. “It had a really funny horn that played music. And he would come driving in, and when he hit the street out on Route 1, he would start blowing his horn and everybody in the neighborhood knew they were back for the weekend. It was really quiet during the week. Nobody came during the week, but on the weekends, they were all there.”
Her husband, Bill, and their four sons have great memories of throwing a football around on the beach with wide receiver Art Monk, Bill said April 30.
Kevin Conlon came to the Cape Gazette with nearly 40 years of newspaper experience since graduating from St. Bonaventure University in New York with a bachelor's degree in mass communication. He reports on Sussex County government and other assignments as needed.
His career spans working as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers in upstate New York, including The Daily Gazette in Schenectady. He comes to the Cape Gazette from the Cortland Standard, where he was an editor for more than 25 years, and in recent years also contributed as a columnist and opinion page writer. He and his staff won regional and state writing awards.
Conlon was relocating to Lewes when he came across an advertisement for a reporter job at the Cape Gazette, and the decision to pursue it paid off. His new position gives him an opportunity to stay in a career that he loves, covering local news for an independently owned newspaper.
Conlon is the father of seven children and grandfather to two young boys. In his spare time, he trains for and competes in triathlons and other races. Now settling into the Cape Region, he is searching out hilly trails and roads with wide shoulders. He is a fan of St. Bonaventure sports, especially rugby and basketball, as well as following the Mets, Steelers and Celtics.
