New Castle County, Delaware
| New Castle County, Delaware | ||
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Old New Castle Courthouse, Delaware Street, New Castle (1936)
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 Location in the U.S. state of Delaware |
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 Delaware's location in the U.S. |
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| Founded | August 8, 1637 | |
| Seat | Wilmington | |
| Largest city | Wilmington | |
| Area | ||
| • Total | 494 sq mi (1,279 km2) | |
| • Land | 426 sq mi (1,103 km2) | |
| • Water | 68 sq mi (176 km2), 13.8% | |
| Population (est.) | ||
| • (2015) | 556,779 | |
| • Density | 1,264/sq mi (488/km²) | |
| Congressional district | At-large | |
| Time zone | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 | |
| Website | www |
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New Castle County is the northernmost of the three counties of the U.S. state of Delaware. As of the 2010 census, the population was 538,479, making it the most populous county in Delaware. The county seat is Wilmington.
New Castle County is included in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is named after the English city of Newcastle.
New Castle County has the highest population and population density of any Delaware county, even though it is the smallest county in the state by area. It has more people than the other two counties, Kent and Sussex, combined. It is also the most economically developed of the three.
Matt Meyer was elected New Castle County Executive in 2016.
New Castle County is home to two minor league sports teams: the Wilmington Blue Rocks (baseball) and the Delaware 87ers (basketball) which play in Newark. It also has a professional auto racing track in New Castle known as Airport Speedway, which races on Saturday nights throughout the summer.
The first permanent European settlement on Delaware soil was Fort Christina, resulting from Peter Minuit's 1638 expedition on the Swedish vessels Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel. The Swedes laid out the town at the site of modern-day Wilmington. They contracted with the Lenape Native Americans for land of Old Cape Henlopen north to Sankikans (Trenton Falls), and inland as far as they desired. However, a dispute ensued between the Swedes and the Dutch, who asserted a prior claim to that land.
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