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DE · 3 counties · fewest of any state · Eastern Time
Delaware county map
Delaware has just three counties — New Castle, Kent and Sussex — the fewest of any state. They date from the 1680s and have never been redrawn.
Three counties, north to south
Delaware’s three counties are stacked from north to south along the western shore of the Delaware River and Bay. New Castle County at the top holds Wilmington and about 60 per cent of the population on a fifth of the land; Kent County in the middle holds the capital, Dover; Sussex County at the bottom stretches to the Atlantic beaches and the Maryland line. Each is governed differently: New Castle has a county executive and council, Kent a levy court, and Sussex a county council.
The counties were established under William Penn in 1682–1683 as the “Lower Counties on Delaware”, which separated from Pennsylvania to form their own assembly in 1704. Sussex was originally called Deale County and Kent was St. Jones County; both were renamed for English counties by 1683. New Castle takes its name from the Dutch-Swedish-English settlement on the river that was the colonial capital until Dover replaced it in 1777.
Below the county level Delaware still uses hundreds, an English subdivision found almost nowhere else in the United States. The 33 hundreds are no longer governments but remain the units for property records and, historically, for representation.
All 3 counties of Delaware
| County | County seat |
|---|---|
| Kent | Dover |
| New Castle | Wilmington |
| Sussex | Georgetown |
Five county facts
- Largest by area: Sussex County, about 940 square miles of land, nearly half the state, from the Nanticoke River marshes to the Atlantic coast at Rehoboth and Bethany Beach.
- Smallest by area: New Castle County, about 425 square miles of land, whose northern border with Pennsylvania is the twelve-mile arc drawn around the New Castle courthouse.
- Most populous: New Castle County, about 571,000 people in 2020, including Wilmington and Newark.
- Least populous: Kent County, about 181,000, despite containing the capital, Dover, and Dover Air Force Base. Sussex has about 237,000 and is growing fastest.
- Oldest and newest: all three counties were organised in 1682–1683 and no county has been created or abolished since — Delaware’s county map is the most stable in the country. There are no independent cities; Wilmington, Dover and Georgetown are the seats.
Reading the map
Press Streets and zoom in to see the two county lines crossing the state from west to east. The New Castle–Kent line runs from the Maryland border to the Delaware Bay just south of Smyrna; the Kent–Sussex line crosses just south of Milford, following the Mispillion River for part of its length. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal cuts across New Castle County and marks the informal boundary between the urban north and rural “Slower Lower” Delaware. The whole state is on Eastern Time.
Related maps
- Delaware map — cities, borders and geography.
- Blank Delaware map and printable Delaware map.
- Dover, the state capital, in Kent County.
- Neighbouring county maps: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey.
- South Atlantic states · Mid-Atlantic · the South · Eastern Time Zone.
- Geography: Mason–Dixon Line, US coastlines.
- All US county maps.