Henlopen Acres, DE Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 1.7 miles north of Henlopen Acres, DE
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 1.7 miles north of Henlopen Acres, DE, the shoreline has been moving inland at 2.23 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 22.3 feet over the last decade.
What "Henlopen Acres" means on this page
Henlopen Acres, DE is the nearest named place, 1.7 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 38.75, -75.09. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
What 2.23 ft/yr means over time
Run 1.7 miles north of Henlopen Acres, DE's 2.23 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 56 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 105 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.46 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 119 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Big Lagoon, CA sits at national rank 246 for erosion (0.68 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2567 miles from here. 2.7 miles up the coast, Lewes, DE shows 1.73 ft/yr of eroding.
One address near Henlopen Acres: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.