Before Rehoboth Beach was a resort town, it was a camp meeting. Its founders did not set out to build a beach destination. They set out to build a place for summer religious gatherings that happened to be beside the ocean.
A charter from the Legislature
On Jan. 27, 1873, the Delaware Legislature incorporated the Rehoboth Beach Camp Meeting Association of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The effort was led by the Rev. Robert W. Todd, and its stated purpose was to maintain a permanent camp-meeting ground and a "Christian sea-side resort."
The association bought more than 400 acres from local farmers. In its first year it laid out its encampment grounds, with small wooden structures known as "tents," and the original Rehoboth boardwalk was built in 1873.
The railroad changes everything
The camp meeting's undoing was its own success at drawing people to the shore. When the railroad reached Rehoboth in 1878, development accelerated and visitors arrived in far greater numbers, most of them more interested in the beach than in religious meetings. The association's camp meetings ended in 1881.
From Cape Henlopen City to Rehoboth Beach
The town that grew up in the camp meeting's place took a few tries to settle on a name. In 1891 the General Assembly incorporated it as Cape Henlopen City. After controversy and reorganization, it was renamed Rehoboth Beach in 1893.
What remains
Very little of the camp meeting era still stands, and the boardwalk is not the one built in 1873. But the shape of the founding is still in the town's story. In January 2023, Rehoboth marked 150 years since the camp meeting association was founded, with a commemoration of the town's religious beginnings.
Rehoboth today is a long way from a Methodist retreat. It is worth remembering, on an off-season walk along the boardwalk, that the first one was built for people who had come to the shore for a different reason.
Sources: The Delaware Public Archives' City of Rehoboth Beach historical marker; Cape Gazette coverage of the 150th anniversary of the camp meeting association's founding (2023), including the Jan. 27, 1873 incorporation and the 1881 end of the camp meetings; the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce's area history for the 1873 encampment, tents and boardwalk and the 1878 railroad; town histories for the 1891 Cape Henlopen City incorporation and the 1893 renaming. Delaware Beach Finds did not attend the anniversary events.