Slaughter Beach

My Mom spent many of her formative years living in Slaughter Beach. That’s her in the middle, between her sisters. Aunt Jean on the left. Aunt Doris on the right.

Having grown up near Slaughter Beach, I never really thought about its name until I was an adult and I realized it sounds more like the title of a horror film than a small beach town.

Slaughter Beach is a small, mostly undeveloped beach just east of Milford, DE. Population 207.

There’s folklore that it got its name from a clash between Native Americans and European Settlers, however most people think it was actually named Slaughter Beach in honor of a postmaster who lived there in the mid-1800’s. Some people think it could be because it’s a spawning area for horseshoe crabs and every year tens of thousands (maybe more) of these crabs come ashore and they’re flipped onto their backs by the tide, or by birds, and they die.

I used to call horseshoe crabs “army helmets” when I was a little kid. They are weird looking things that you can’t eat, and if you step on one in your bare feet your mom might have to wash your mouth out with soap.

Wikipedia says they’re not really crabs, and their blood is important to medical researchers. I just know they got in the way when I wanted to play football on the beach.

Mom lived in the Mispillion Lighthouse at Slaughter Beach for a while. It was built in 1831 and it looked like they were building a house, and one guy said, “Hey we should make this a lighthouse” about halfway through construction so they did.

I’m told Mom Mom ran the restaurant that was there, and Pop Pop had a charter boat (they called it a party boat) that was docked at the pier in front of the lighthouse. It was named the Me 2. I learned at Mom’s funeral that Pop Pop named the boat the Me 2 because my mom was jealous that the older people got to go fishing every day, and she would run down to the dock hollering, “Me too!”

The lighthouse is gone now. It was struck by lightning in 2002 and the only part that was salvaged was the very top octagonal lighthouse part. It’s now sitting atop a house in the Ship Carpenters Square complex in Lewes, DE.

Mom used to tell me stories about the actor Robert Mitchum living next to them at Slaughter Beach. He was older than her, and not yet famous. He apparently married a Delaware girl named Dorothy Spence before moving to Hollywood and starting a prolific acting career.

Once I realized that Slaughter Beach was a weird name, I realized that Delaware has a bunch of oddly named towns and rivers. Broadkill Beach? The Murderkill River? Apparently the Lewes Rehoboth Canal was originally called the Whorekill River. Honorable mention to Killen’s Pond.

The tag “kill” is Dutch and means creek or riverbed. That’s been long forgotten.

Those areas I mentioned are actually peaceful and pretty, for the most part. Except for the army helmets. Don’t step on them.