Georgetown

I told Lia about Return Day on the drive down and she assumed I was inventing it to entertain her, the way I sometimes do with local trivia. I wasn’t. Georgetown, Delaware’s Sussex County seat since 1791, holds a tradition every two years, two days after Election Day, where winning and losing candidates ride ox-drawn carts around The Circle together and a hatchet is literally buried in sand to symbolize the end of campaigning. We arrived off-season, no parade in sight, but the town crier’s script is posted near the courthouse steps and the story checks out completely — this really is the only place in America that still does it.

The Circle and the courthouse

Georgetown is built, almost defiantly, around a single central circle, with the 1839 Sussex County Courthouse as its anchor and government buildings, churches, and old storefronts arranged around it like spokes. We had lunch at a diner just off The Circle where every other table seemed to be occupied by lawyers on a break from the courthouse across the street, still in their suits, arguing amiably about something unrelated to their cases. It gave the town a small-capital-city energy that felt disproportionate to its size — Georgetown has fewer than eight thousand residents, but it runs an entire county from that circle.

Poultry country roots

Sussex County produces more broiler chickens than almost any county in the United States, and Georgetown sits right at the heart of that industry — a fact you notice in the grain trucks rumbling through town and the enormous processing plants on the outskirts that most beach-bound tourists never see. We stopped at the Marvel Museum, a small collection dedicated to Sussex County’s aviation and agricultural history, run by volunteers who were clearly thrilled to have visitors who weren’t just passing through on the way to Rehoboth twenty minutes east.

Getting There

Georgetown is about 25 minutes inland from the Delaware beaches, making it an easy half-day detour if you’re staying near Rehoboth or Lewes. The nearest larger airport is Salisbury Regional (SBY), about 40 minutes south, or Philadelphia International (PHL), roughly two hours north. A car is essential — there’s no direct public transit — but the drive from the coast, past chicken farms and open fields, is short enough to make Georgetown an easy add-on rather than a separate trip.