Delaware is a tiny place. It can be pretty easy to even forget that it's a state. No one really talks about Delaware or mentions how they have family or friends who live there. Vice President Joe Biden is from the state. Lots of corporations call it home for tax purposes. And there's also lots of our nation's history to be found in and around the state. But it's still a tiny little place that's easy to overlook.
It takes almost no time to drive across the state, though, so that's definitely a bonus to living in Delaware. It contains a mere 1,982 square miles and is only 96 miles across, varying between 9 miles to 35 miles in width. This means it ranks at about 49th in the nation for total area. However, even with such small overall space covered, Delaware's first modern highway (and the first dual lane highway in the nation) was financed by T. Coleman du Pont from 1911 to 1924. It runs for about 100 miles between Wilmington and the state's southern border.
And yet, even with such little road space, cars and driving are a huge deal to Delawarians. There are nearly 20,000 auto-related jobs in the state, serving the nearly 800,000 registered vehicles. There are 359 dealerships with cars for sale, allowing Delaware drivers to travel an average of 12,787 miles per year. Those drives sometimes lead to New Jersey, via a connection with the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Other times those drives lead to Maryland, via the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway.
Though if you do take some time away from driving to fly, just make sure you don't fly over any body of water without sufficient supplies of food and water. That's against the law.
