History
On January 21, 1811, the Wilmington and Kennett Turnpike Company was incorporated to build a toll road from Wilmington to the Pennsylvania border at Centreville. The road was built between 1811 and 1813 at a cost of $30,000. The charter of the turnpike gave Christiana Hundred the option to purchase the road in 1820 and remove the tolls. The Kennett Pike had two toll gates north of Wilmington. In 1919, Pierre S. du Pont bought the road and the toll gates were removed. The road widened and paved following the sale and eventually sold to the Delaware State Highway Department. When Delaware designated state highways by 1936, DE 52 was designated onto its current alignment. In 2002, DE 52 was designated as part of the Brandywine Valley Scenic Highway in the Delaware Scenic and Historic Highways system; it was designated a National Scenic Byway in 2005.
Read more about this topic: Delaware Route 52
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)