de Vries Monument And Fort Site (Lewes, Delaware)

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deVRIES MONUMENT AND FORT SITE, Pilottown Road, Lewes, Delaware

In 1631 on this site, 28 Dutch settlers under the direction of deVries established the whaling colony of Zwaanendael and erected a fort. The following spring, Indians burned the stockade and massacred the settlers. Although the ill-fated settlement endured only briefly, its existence was significant in Delaware's becoming a separate State The Monument honoring the significance of the settlement was erected in the center of what was once the North bastion of the fort (apparently by coincidence). In 1964 members of the Sussex Society of Archaeology and History found the postmold patterns of the South bastion as sketched by deVries. This discovery culminated several years of effort to determine the exact location of the fort.