[2] The first European settlement in the state of Delaware was founded by the Dutch in 1631 near the present-day town of Lewes on the Atlantic Coast.

Historic Native Americans in Sussex County were members of Algonquian-speaking tribes, as were most coastal peoples along the Atlantic Coast.

The people settled along the numerous bodies of water in the area where they were able to harvest fish, oysters, and other shellfish in the fall and winter.

[citation needed] On an expedition for the Dutch West India Company, Henry Hudson recorded discovery in 1609 of what was later named the Delaware River.

Attempting to follow him, Samuel Argall, an English explorer, was blown off course in 1610 and landed in a strange bay which he named after the Governor of Virginia, Thomas West, Lord De La Warr.

On June 3, 1631, Dutch captain David Pietersen de Vries landed along the shores of the Delaware to establish a whaling colony in the mid-Atlantic of the New World.

At that time, the city of Amsterdam made a grant of land at the Hoernkills (the area around Cape Henlopen, near the current town of Lewes) to a party of Mennonites.

A total of 35 men were to be included in the settlement, led by a Pieter Cornelisz Plockhoy of Zierikzee, and funded by a sizable loan from the city to get them established.

This settlement, established in 1663, was organized in part by the Dutch to respond to threats from the English colony of Maryland to the west beginning to assert rights over the area.

It was a tempting wilderness base for pirates to hide out from authorities and regularly pillage settlers for supplies.

Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore and William Penn both claimed the land between the 39th and 40th parallels, according to the charters granted to each colony.

But Lord Baltimore later claimed that the document he signed did not contain the terms he had agreed to, and refused to put the agreement into effect.

In 1750–1751, a team of surveyors from both colonies surveyed and marked the Transpeninsular Line, which established the southern boundary of Sussex County.

The issue was unresolved until the Crown intervened in 1760, ordering Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore to accept the 1732 agreement.

As part of the settlement, the Penns and Calverts commissioned the English team of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the newly established boundaries between the Province of Pennsylvania, the Province of Maryland, Delaware Colony and parts of Colony and Old Dominion of Virginia.

Between 1763 and 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the Mason-Dixon line, settling Sussex County's western borders.

After Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1781, the western part of this line and the Ohio River became a border between free and slave states.

In 1769 a movement started to move the county seat from Lewes to the area then known as Cross Roads, the present day site of Milton.

It was centered on the original square surveyed by Shankland, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

From 1680 to 1682 it was known as Deale County, after being taken over by the British under James Stuart, Duke of York prior to signing over to William Penn.

It was called Durham County when claimed by the Lords Baltimore during the boundary dispute with the Penn family.

The eastern portion of the county is home to Delaware's beaches on the Atlantic Coast and many seaside resorts.

The western side of the county is the center of Delaware's agriculture, industry with more acres of arable land under cultivation than anywhere else in the state.

[citation needed] Sussex County is home to an extensive system of Southern saltwater and freshwater wetlands, notably the Great Cypress Swamp.

This massive freshwater swamp contains the northernmost strand of Bald Cypress trees in the United States.

The Trewartha climate classification only has the area along the Atlantic Coast up to Cape Henlopen and Lewes as Cf and the remainder of the county as Do (oceanic.)

This was the only county in Delaware that Barack Obama did not carry in either of his presidential bids, despite the presence of Delawarean Joe Biden on the ballot.

[21] These positions are held by Norman A. Jones Jr. (R), Alexandra Reed Baker (R), Gregory Fuller (R), and Robert Lee (R), respectively.

[40] Those state funded public high schools which participate in sporting events are members of the Henlopen Conference.

Many local restaurants serve southern cuisine such as sweet tea and dishes including or composed entirely of greens in addition to menus heavy with fried food.