The Wilmington and Susquehanna Railroad Company (started in 1837) was one of four companies that joined to make the PW&B in 1838. It was made up of rails that ran from the Pennsylvania line through Wilmington and along the southern part of Newark (the northern part of Pencader Hundred) to the Maryland line. It merged with the Philadelphia and Delaware County Railroad Company's line running from Philadelphia to the Delaware Line, the Baltimore and Port Deposit Railroad Company on the Susquehanna, and the Delaware and Maryland Railroad Company which had rails from the Delaware line to the Susquehanna. The merger allowed for a continuous rail line from Philadelphia through Delaware to the Susquehanna River. At that point, freight and passengers were unloaded and ferried across the Susquehanna, then loaded back onto railroad cars for the trip to Baltimore. This service proved to be superior to the New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad that required two longer trips by boat, one at each end of the rail service, to make the same journey, which contributed to it's demise in 1853. A trip from Wilmington to Baltimore with the PW&BRR took three hours and forty-five minutes in 1937. The Susquehanna River was first bridged in 1866.
The old cart road known as the Newark to Glasgow Road was the only access to Newark from the south and is now called South College Avenue. In the late 1830's it was referred to as Depot Road after a train station was built on the west side of the road at the railroad tracks. The 1849 Rea and Price Map of New Castle County reveals the railroad tracks, a 'Female Seminary', a store, and another unidentified structure. The town limits of Newark did not extend south to the railroad tracks until 1934.
The land southwest of the area was acquired in 1947 by the Chrysler Corporation for its Newark Assembly Plant. To the southeast of the crossing is now the University of Delaware farm. Old maps show Russel owning the farm in 1849,W. H. Schultz in 1868, and Ed. R. Wilson owning 214 acres in 1881. The existing Newark Passenger Railroad station, moved to the northeast of the road and railroad tracks was not built until 1877 and remained in operation until the 1950's.
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