Guest, Sign inJoin

Post to Odessa

We’ll email a one-tap link to publish your post. No password, and nothing is public until you click it.
Already a member? Sign in
–Not graded
History · Odessa

Odessa was first counted by the census in 1850, and 49% of its homes were built before 1940

9 places in town are on the National Register, among them the Corbit-Sharp House, a National Historic Landmark, and a historic district with 40 buildings. Below: 17 old photos and papers, maps from 1931 on, and the census since 1850.

1850first census
9on the National Register
49%homes built before 1940
17old photos & papers
1famous people
Add an old photoShare a memory
From Odessa’s archive · credits on each photo
Quick answers

How Odessa began

When was Odessa founded?

1850

Odessa first appears in the census in 1850. Another post office, Cantwell's Bridge (1795), opened inside today’s town and later closed.

First census: 501 in 18502020 census: 366176 years
Founding year: the first census.The full story ↓

What stands out about Odessa’s past

Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.

A National Historic Landmark9 places on the National Register, including Corbit-Sharp House, a National Historic Landmark.A historic districtThe Odessa Historic District takes in 40 historic buildings.A town in old photos17 old photos, postcards and papers.Boom and bustPeaked at 695 in 1870; 366 people lived here in 2020.
★ What stands out · On the National Register

9 listings protect 50 historic buildings

The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving. One is a National Historic Landmark, the highest tier.

places listed
9
National Historic Landmark
1
Corbit-Sharp House
historic buildings protected
50
each building in a district counts
first listed
1967
Corbit-Sharp House
Odessa Historic DistrictAppoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse, built 1785Old St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal ChurchCorbit-Sharp House★
BuildingsDistricts★ landmark

Architectural styles listings

Georgian2
Greek Revival2
Georgian Style1
Federal1
Italianate1
Victorian1
★ Landmark
Corbit-Sharp HouseGeorgian Style
Odessa Historic DistrictFederal
Appoquinimink Friends MeetinghouseBuilt 1785
Old Drawyers ChurchGeorgian
Williams HouseGeorgian
Old St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal ChurchGreek Revival
FairviewBuilding
FairviewGreek Revival
All 9 listings
RiverdaleBuilding · listed 1985

National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.

By decade

Odessa, decade by decade

One decade in the archive so far: the 1930s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.

1930s17 items
Pleasant Hill Motel, U.S. Route 13 -- 1-2 mile south, Odessa, Delaware (86525)c. 1930Pleasant Hill Motel, U.S. Route 13 -- 1-2 mile south,…First floor- view of interior of crib walls and framing looking northeast - J. Moore Farmstead, Corncrib, East side of …1933First floor- view of interior of crib walls and frami…GROUND LEVEL STALL - Woodlawn, Barn, Saint Georges Hundred, County Route 429, East of Route 428, Odessa, New Castle Cou…1933GROUND LEVEL STALL - Woodlawn, Barn, Saint Georges Hu…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 1 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 1 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 1 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 1 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 2 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 2 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 2 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 2 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 3 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 3 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 3 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 3 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 4 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 4 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 4 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 4 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 5 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 5 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 5 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 5 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 6 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 6 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 6 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskrat Shed, Thomas Corner Road near Appoquinimink Creek, Odessa, New …1933HABS DEL,2-OD.V,2- (sheet 6 of 6) - Ike Cleaver Muskr…Oakland Plantation, Smokehouse, Intersection of Routes 428 and 429 (Saint Georges Hundred), Odessa, New Castle County, …1933Oakland Plantation, Smokehouse, Intersection of Route…Oakland Plantation, Smokehouse, Intersection of Routes 428 and 429 (Saint Georges Hundred), Odessa, New Castle County, …1933Oakland Plantation, Smokehouse, Intersection of Route…
1940s–1990snothing yet
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
Add from your album
The story

How Odessa came to be

From Wikipedia’s history of Odessa.

Read it all →

Odessa was originally known as Cantwell's Bridge. In 1721, a son of Captain Edmund Cantwell opened a toll bridge over the Appoquinimink Creek at this location. Cantwell's Bridge became an important port that shipped wheat, corn, tobacco, and produce down the creek to the Delaware Bay, where it traveled to distant ports. The town was also home to tanneries that produced leather goods. Cantwell's Bridge would continue to prosper as an agricultural port into the 19th century. In 1855, the grain trade collapsed after the Delaware Railroad was built to the west through Middletown. The railroad was originally proposed to be built through Cantwell's Bridge but the merchants and vessel owners in the town opposed. Following this, the town was renamed to Odessa after the port city of Odessa in the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) in an effort to keep the town alive as a major port. The town s…

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Timeline

Odessa, 1785 to 1967

Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.

  1. 18th century
  2. 1785BuiltAppoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse is built
  3. 1795Post officeThe Cantwell's Bridge post office opens
  4. 19th century
  5. 1817Born hereJohn M. Brown is born here
  6. 1855Post officeThe Cantwell's Bridge post office closes
  7. 1855Post officeThe Odessa post office opens
  8. 1870CensusPopulation peaks at 695
  9. 20th century
  10. 1930In the archivePleasant Hill Motel, U.S. Route 13 -- 1-2 mile south, Odessa, Delaware (86525)
  11. 1931On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey
  12. 1967LandmarkCorbit-Sharp House named a National Historic Landmark
On the map

Odessa on the map, 1931 to 1993

Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Odessa. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.

Odessa on the 1931 USGS mapOdessa on the 1953 USGS mapOdessa on the 1986 USGS mapOdessa on the 1993 USGS map1931Smyrna sheet · 1:62,500

U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Odessa.

Then & now

Stand where they stood

No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.

Pleasant Hill Motel, U.S. Route 13 -- 1-2 mile south, Odessa, Delaware (86525)
Retake this viewPleasant Hill Motel, U.S. Route 13 -- 1-2 mile south, Odessa, Delaware (86525), c. 1930

Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Odessa’s page.

Retake this view · +15
People over time

Odessa, census by census

01002003004005006007001850190019502000Peak: 695

Peaked at 695 in 1870; 366 people lived here in 2020.

18 censuses, 1850–2020.

U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Odessa’s Wikipedia page.

Places that used to be

Lost post offices and burying grounds

Odessa’s post office has been open since 1855. Another post office, Cantwell's Bridge, opened and closed inside today’s town.

Cantwell's Bridge
1795–1855
Odessa
1855–today
17901910today
1cemetery inside Odessa
Corbit

US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).

Help out

Finish Odessa’s story

Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.

Decades since 1900 with photos
00s10s20s30s40s50s60s70s80s90s
1 of 10 decades. The empty ones are waiting for someone’s album.
Retake an old viewPleasant Hill Motel, U.S. Route 13 -- 1…: stand where they stood+15Share a family photoSign in to add one+10

Questions about Odessa’s history

What year was Odessa founded?

The Odessa post office opened in 1850, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).

What is on the National Register in Odessa?

9 listings: 8 buildings, among them the Corbit-Sharp House (a National Historic Landmark since 1967), and 1 historic district, the Odessa Historic District, with 40 contributing buildings. 50 historic buildings in all.

Memory lane

What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.

Town Square →
Start a conversation
Sources

Where this page comes from

Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →

From Wikimedia Commons (17), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (9), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.