Baltimore to New York Drive: Time & Stops

The 1732 courthouse is the literal center of a 12-mile-radius arc that still defines the Delaware-Pennsylvania border today -- stand in the building and you're standing at the geometric origin of a state boundary. Outside, the cobblestone Green (laid out by Peter Stuyvesant in 1655) and colonial streetscape make this one of the best-preserved small historic

the rowdiest crowd in baseball, the Liberty Bell, and a cheesesteak worth the line

Built around illustrator Howard Pyle and his student N.C. Wyeth (godfather of the Brandywine School of American illustration), plus the largest Pre-Raphaelite art collection outside the UK -- a surprising, story-rich stop that most road-trippers wouldn't expect to find in Wilmington.

The du Pont family's original 1802 gunpowder works on the Brandywine -- walk between reconstructed powder yards, a working 19th-century machine shop, and the family's first American home, all on 235 riverside acres. The origin story of the entire du Pont/Brandywine Valley dynasty that also built Winterthur and Nemours, so it anchors the corridor rather than

Alfred I. du Pont's 1910 gift to his second wife: a 77-room French neoclassical chateau modeled on Versailles and the Petit Trianon, fronted by the longest formal allee of fountains in North America -- the 'American Versailles' story is an easy, vivid hook for road-trippers.

A Civil War fort on an island you can only reach by boat -- 33,000 Confederate POWs passed through here, and today costumed interpreters and a haunted-history reputation make it one of the most atmospheric stops in the state. The ferry ride itself, past channel markers and osprey nests, is part of the experience.

Henry Francis du Pont's 979-acre former estate along the Brandywine -- naturalistic gardens, an American decorative-arts collection, and one of the named cultural-institution stops that gives the Brandywine Valley National Scenic Byway its 'concentration of historic sites, magnificent estates, glorious gardens' character.