Delmarva Overview
Total Population: 920,000 residents (664,000 registered voters)
Prospective State Capital: Dover, DV
Number of House Seats: Delmarva - 1 / Delaware - 1
Notable Attractions: Ocean City, Rehoboth Beach, Chesapeake Bay Bridge
Major Universities: Salisbury University, Delaware State University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore (HBCU)
2020 Presidential Vote: Donald Trump - 54% / Joe Biden - 44%
Statehood History
The Delmarva Peninsula is a 170 mile-long peninsula currently occupied by three states: Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. The name is a clipped compound derived from the leading letters and abbreviations of the three states. The peninsula is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware River to the east and the Chesapeake Bay to the west.
The origin of the peninsula’s current political boundaries can be traced back to before the birth of the nation. The line running west across the peninsula from its center, just north of present-day Salisbury, is known as the Transpeninsular Line, and was officially recognized as the southern border of the Delaware colony in 1751. The vertical line traveling north from the Transpeninsular Line is a portion of the infamous Mason-Dixon line. While the border was officially established in 1767, over a hundred years of conflict predated the line as land grants in the Maryland and Pennsylvania colonies (which included Delaware at the time) defined the boundary differently. Once today’s boundaries were established the colonies were admitted as some of the first states in the new nation. While the peninsula has been part of the United States throughout the nation’s history, the name “Delmarva” was not used regularly until the late 19th century.
The most prominent, modern-day campaign for secession came in the late 1990s. A “Delmarva State Party” was allegedly established in 1992 (although I couldn’t find any records to verify this.) By 1998, the idea was causing a stir in Maryland’s General Assembly as the effort was primarily led by Maryland state representatives. By the end of the 20th century, the rural Eastern Shore counties of Maryland had little in common with the more urbanized portions of the state surrounding Washington DC and Baltimore. Not only did things move much more slowly on the rural peninsula, residents also were staunchly more conservative than those in the more centralized portions of Maryland. Delegates drafted a bill that would have put secession to a vote, allowing Marylanders the option to remove these rural areas out from under the control of “beltway bullies” as one delegate described. Delegates also sent informal ‘invitations’ to the two Virginia counties and two of the three counties of Delaware. New Castle county, the heavily urbanized, northernmost county home to Wilmington was purposefully excluded:
Delmarva Today
Today, the Delmarva Peninsula is powered by two primary industries: agriculture and tourism. The area is a hub for poultry farming in particular, as the headquarters of Perdue Farms is located in Salisbury. The peninsula’s beaches are the hub of its tourism, primarily during the summer months. While the cities of Ocean City, MD and neighboring Rehoboth Beach, DE collectively hold less than 10,000 permanent residents, on busy weekends the beach towns often entertain hundreds of thousands of tourists. It is estimated that over 8 million people visit Delmarva beaches annually.
Delmarva statehood seems particularly unlikely for a bunch of reasons. First and foremost, Marylanders in support of secession have failed to mount a successful campaign within their current state. Second, the counties currently located in Delaware and Virginia have been much cooler on the Delmarva statehood movement and would have to push legislation through their own respective state governments to join the new state. Lastly, if these difficult tasks could be accomplished, supporters would be put to the ultimate test as they would have to convince Congress to validate the new state, yet another long shot as members of both parties regularly bristle at the political ramifications of introducing a new state to the union. Today, the name lives on through various businesses on the peninsula, the largest being the Delmarva Power Company.
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