Delaware

The first state

Delaware’s place in history was settled in a single day. On December 7, 1787, a convention in Dover voted to ratify the new US Constitution, making Delaware the first state to do so, five days ahead of Pennsylvania. Delaware has never let anyone forget it. The date appears on its flag and its seal, and because it ratified first, Delaware takes the first position in national ceremonies such as presidential inaugurations.

In 2002 the legislature made “the First State” the official nickname, after a first-grade class at Mt. Pleasant Elementary School asked for it. Delaware has several unofficial nicknames too. “The Diamond State” comes from a tradition that Thomas Jefferson called it a jewel among the states. “The Blue Hen State” honors the fighting gamecocks said to have been carried by Delaware’s soldiers in the Revolutionary War. And “Small Wonder” refers to how much the little state has contributed.

An English name

Unlike most eastern states, Delaware’s name has nothing to do with a Native American word. It honors an English nobleman, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, the first governor of the Virginia colony. In 1610 one of his captains, Samuel Argall, sailed into a large bay and named it for his superior. The name spread from the bay to the river, then, in English usage, to the Lenape people who lived along it, and finally to the colony and the state.

Three counties that broke away

For most of the colonial era Delaware was the “Three Lower Counties” of Pennsylvania: New Castle, Kent and Sussex. They had their own assembly, which met at New Castle from 1704, but they shared a governor with Pennsylvania. On June 15, 1776, the assembly in New Castle voted to separate from both Pennsylvania and Britain, the day Delaware still marks as Separation Day. In 1777, during the Revolutionary War, the capital moved inland to Dover, where it has stayed. The capital page tells the story.

Peaches, horseshoe crabs and a star

Delaware has 35 official symbols, and many of them were proposed by schoolchildren. The peach blossom was chosen in 1895, when Delaware’s orchards held more than 800,000 peach trees, and peach pie became the state dessert in 2009. The state bird is the Blue Hen chicken, a domestic fowl, and the University of Delaware’s teams are the Fightin’ Blue Hens. The horseshoe crab is the state marine animal: Delaware Bay has more of them than anywhere else in the world, and the red knot, a shorebird that feeds on their eggs, became the state migratory bird in 2025. Delaware even has its own star, the Delaware Diamond, in the constellation Ursa Major, named by a 12-year-old from Wilmington. See every symbol on the Delaware symbols page.

The motto is “Liberty and Independence,” and the flag shows the state arms in a buff diamond on colonial blue, the colors of George Washington’s uniform.

Small but crowded

Delaware covers 2,489 square miles, of which 540 are water. Only Rhode Island is smaller. It had about 1.06 million residents in 2025, 45th among the states, and it has grown quickly, adding about 70,000 people since 2020. It borders Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey, across Delaware Bay, and faces the Atlantic Ocean. Wilmington, in the north, is the largest city, followed by Dover and Newark, home of the University of Delaware.