Delaware Coastal Highway · DE-1

Delaware's beaches end to end, one way: from Lewes the route rides through Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach, then down the strip between the Atlantic and Rehoboth Bay in Delaware Seashore State Park, over the Indian River Inlet Bridge and on through Bethany Beach to Fenwick Island, where it ends without crossing into Ocean City, Maryland. It's 25 miles, mostly on four-lane DE-1: this one is about the view, not the curves. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, weekend beach traffic packs DE-1, so ride it off-season or on a weekday.

The route starts in Lewes, where the Zwaanendael Museum, finished in 1932 for the 300th anniversary of the 1631 Dutch settlement, copies the old city hall of Hoorn in the Netherlands and tells the story of the shipwrecks and lighthouses of this coast. From there it rides into Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach, and south of Dewey DE-1 enters Delaware Seashore State Park, a strip of dunes with the ocean on one side and Rehoboth and Indian River Bays on the other. The Indian River Life-Saving Station, built in 1880 to rescue shipwrecked sailors, is now a museum of the state park, with its own parking lot by the road.

Then comes the Indian River Inlet Bridge, the cable-stayed Charles W. Cullen Bridge that opened in 2012, with state park lots on both sides of the inlet; watch for crosswinds on the bridge. The road goes on through Bethany Beach to Fenwick Island and stops there, short of the Maryland line and Ocean City. DE-1 here is a four-lane divided highway with heavy summer traffic, worst on Friday evenings southbound, Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons northbound. The ocean parks charge out-of-state vehicles $20 a day from March 1 to November 30, 2026; riding through on DE-1 is free.