A Ferry Tale: Crossing the Delaware on the Cape May-Lewis Ferry

by William J. Miller Jr.

A ferry service does not begin in the drafting room of engineers nor in the swank offices of financiers. It begins, rather, in the imagination of men who want to get from one land base to another, across a body of water, in as straight a line as possible – and as quickly as possible. This is how the Cape-May-Lewes ferry began – back in the dawn of the histories of Delaware and New Jersey. From the earliest days of colonization, men figured that the Delaware Bay and Atlantic Ocean could be either a barrier between the two states or a common bond. The opening of the Cape May-Lewes ferry capped the climax of dreaming, thinking and planning on how to "bridge" the barrier and establish what a New Jersey governor called "the betrothal of our two states."

110 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984