Fort Casimir: Three Nations on the Delaware
Near Wilmington, Delaware
In the middle sixteen hundreds, this spot on the Delaware River was one of the most contested pieces of ground in North America. Three European nations, the Dutch, the Swedes, and the English, all understood that whoever controlled this reach of the river controlled trade into the interior of the continent. The Dutch built Fort Casimir here in sixteen fifty-one, planting their flag in territory the Swedes had claimed.
Three years later, the Swedes captured it, renaming it Fort Trinity. Then the Dutch took it back. Then the English absorbed the whole of New Netherland in sixteen sixty-four, and the fort passed into British hands without a shot.
The Lenape people had lived along this river for thousands of years before any of these powers arrived. The fort they never built outlasted all three of the stone and timber ones European hands raised on this shore.
