A History of the Junction & Breakwater Railroad

A History of the Junction and Breakwater Railroad. . , All Aboard! , Chartered in 1857, the Junction and Breakwater Railroad (J&BRR) ran the 38 miles from a junction with the Delaware Railroad in Harrington to the Delaware Breakwater in Lewes. The portion of the line from Georgetown to Lewes opened for service in 1870 with stations at each end. Between the established endpoints, new stations constructed at Messick, Gravely Hill (later Bennum), Harbeson (later Broadkill), Cool Spring, and Nassau served as anchors for the growth of small communities around each location. All of the stations were used to load freight, while only four stations (Georgetown, Broadkill, Nassau, and Lewes) offered passenger service., Rise in Perishable Produce and Canning , The arrival of the railroad spurred local manufacturing and agricultural activities and transformed communities, like Georgetown, into important regional transportation and trade centers. The J&BRR enabled local farmers to ship their products to urban markets more efficiently. A rise in demand for perishable products, like fruits and vegetables, spurred the establishments of canning and preserving facilities along the railroad line during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at Georgetown, Cool Spring, and Nassau., Decline of the Railroad , The J&BRR continued to serve as an important regional transportation route for commercial and passenger traffic into the mid-twentieth century, first as a subsidiary of the Delaware Maryland and Virginia Railroad, and later as a lessee of the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Wilmington Railroad., By the mid-twentieth century, the J&BRR faced increasing competition from Delaware's emerging trucking industry and the rising national trend in automobile use. Unable to compete, passenger service on the line terminated in 1949. During the 1980s, the State of Delaware acquired the rights to the section of the railroad line from Georgetown to Lewes, and up until 2016, it operated as a freight line under the Delaware Coast Line Railroad., Today, the only railroad buildings that remain along this section of the line are the former Passenger Station and Engine House in Georgetown., [Caption:] , The efficiency of the railroad encouraged local farmers to grow perishable crops, like fruit and vegetables, and spurred the creation of a regional canning industry. Trucks delivered raw produce to packinghouses (like the one seen here), where it was received and processed before being loaded onto railroad cars and shipped to urban markets (image courtesy of the Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware).