[film projector sound] Let's do it, come on.

[music] We're out here celebrating my daughter's 15th birthday.

She turned 15 yesterday.

I feel like I'm on a vacation.

Oh, I am on a vacation.

We become the cruise ship per day for them.

50 years after its maiden voyage, the Cape May-Lewes ferry is now a part of what defines our region.

I was a little kid.

You know, the depressing thing when you celebrate a 50 year anniversary of the ferry, I could have been on that inaugural ride.

For the next hour, we'll learn a lot about the ferry.

About how it got started in a rare act of cooperation among three states.

About how it shaped the history of the two towns that gave the ferry its name.

And about some of the rough waters and sunny family moments the ferry has seen.

Those of us who are Delawareans, we wouldn't go to.

We wouldn't go to New Jersey.

New Jersey, that was the shore.

Yeah, we were at the beach.

There wasn't that much back and forth.

Delaware was sort of a sleepy little state that only had Rehoboth Beach.

And we had Cape May and Wildwood and Ocean City.

It's just 17 miles, but multiply that by 50 years and you have a lot of rides that add up to billions of miles.

If you've ridden the ferry before, this is your nostalgia cruise.

If you've never been across the Delaware Bay, glad to have you along.

[music] Billion Mile Journey, the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, is partially funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state program of the National Endowment for Humanities.

And through the generous support of the C.E.

Bennett Foundation and contributions to WHYY by viewers like you.

Thank you.

May I have your attention please?

This is the boarding announcement for the 915 departure.

All drivers and passengers, please return to your vehicles at this time.

And thank you for taking a break from the ordinary.

This is the boarding announcement for the 9:15 departure.

Typically they work an 8 hour shift.

So they're either getting a boat ready and started in the morning and then they get relieved in the afternoon.

We have a passenger that has lost their wallet.

If anybody has recovered a wallet please see one of our crew members as soon as possible.

Is that one of the things you have to worry about?

Lost wallets?

People lose all kinds of things on the ferry.

Ferry port captain Brian Helm is talking about ferry operations.

On another day he's a tour guide for a summer camp group from Wildwood.

Talking about what it takes to keep the Cape May-Lewes ferry running.

I'll say 95% of the time it's very fun.

I love it.

There's about 5% of the time where I wish somebody else were me.

But that comes with the territory, right?

Is it hard to drive a big ferry?

Yes, it's hard.

But I'll say this, driving a car is hard.

Helm is just one of the people WHYY spoke with about life around the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, celebrating 50 years traveling across the Delaware Bay.

Operations can sometimes be interesting.

I'll never forget the first time I docked one of the ferries over in Delaware.

It wasn't pretty.

It took a long time to do it.

It banged in and off.

I got it in there.

It didn't break anything.

But it was an experience that I'll never forget.

Most of the billion-mile journey of the ferry has been routine.

A lost wallet here.

An out-of-control car horn or dead car battery there.

However, in the beginning, it also involved a little bit of politics, a dash of history, some interesting engineering, and a few stories of weddings and births along the way.

Come along.

[music] In traveling through this journey, you have to pass through a piece of history involving Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia.

It's about the Delaware River and the ways we found it necessary to connect Delaware and New Jersey.

It's about building roads in those two states that we now take for granted.

It's also a story about something that is unheard of these days - compromise.

People have always wanted to cross the Delaware and in a lot of ways it's always been talked about in terms of achieving this dream.

The Delaware Historical Society now has first-hand access to the events that led up to the creation of the ferry.

The Bill Frank collection is a very large collection of clippings and photographs and notes of Bill Frank, who was a columnist for the News Journal.

The documents show, as America's roadways expanded, people's appetites to go places expanded with it.

So let's begin with Delaware's transportation connection.

When the first Swedes and Finns sailed across the ocean, they sailed across the Atlantic, they reached the Delaware Bay, they headed north.

Delaware lays claim to English, Swedish, and Dutch heritage.

The water made it attractive.

Lewis was first settled in 1631 by the Dutch.

They came over really trying to establish a whaling colony.

It was known as Swanandale.

European settlers were very attracted to the Delaware in terms of commerce and trade.

Cities along the Delaware, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Camden, and Newcastle, really became booming towns because of the way that shipping was at the time.

But that all kind of changed a little bit later as shipping changed and transportation changed.

People wanted to move goods over land and the river actually became an impediment.

So by the early 20th century, most people are using automobiles, motor vehicles to get around.

In 1908, T. Coleman DuPont sort of came up with this great solution.

He was going to personally finance a road that connected northern and southern Delaware.

For Downstate, this was major.

This changed the game.

For Lewis, those changes allowed everything to click.

Fishing was the primary industry.

Lewis was literally the largest fishing port in the country in the 1950s, specifically for the Menhaden Fisheries headquartered here and had plants all the way from Newfoundland, Canada, all the way down through Chile and South America.

So it was the center of a vast fishing empire.

But in a few years, technology killed the fishing industry, and Lewes needed help.

Lewes was really a town in transition in the early 1960s.

By 1963, the factory pretty much essentially shut down.

Summertime in the 50s and 60s meant going to the beach in Delaware, and that meant Rehoboth.

In the post-World War II years, more and more people headed there.

Lewes had to figure something out quickly.

Could they compete?

They did have the history.

There was a quick sense in the 1960s to take advantage of those assets and to promote those assets.

And the ferry only added to that opportunity.

The next leg in our billion-mile journey takes us to Cape May.

Its history and lifestyle is totally different from Lewis.

Cape May is the oldest seashore resort in America.

Long before ferry boats, long before cars, and long before roads.

The biggest thing that was the start of the resort business here was the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s, and cities became very polluted.

And so people from Philadelphia started coming down here.

So that was kind of the start of the first resort boom.

In 1876 a fire rages through Cape May in the area from the beach back in for three or four blocks and for about eight or nine blocks along the beachfront.

people decide to rebuild and now they're building late 1870s, early 1880s Victorian mansions.

Cape May experienced boom and bust cycles throughout the 20th century.

At the end of World War II, attitudes changed again toward Cape May.

Nobody wants to come and stay in these old Victorian hotels.

You didn't have private bathrooms, they were down the hall, they weren't necessarily on the beachfront.

At about that same time you have the rise of all the motels in Wildwood and that doo-wop architecture.

Wildwood became the place to be.

It's not surprising that so many people are attracted to the Wildwoods by the sea.

The region hit a low point in March 1962 when a Nor'easter hit.

Homes and beaches were destroyed.

Cape May needed to rebuild again.

This time, there was a bigger agenda at stake.

The parkway was a significant improvement to the area.

Until the parkway, there were no major roads that came down into Cape May County.

And with better roads, people could start thinking about other ways to make life better.

We'll let Perry Tell explain it.

It's a South Jersey thing.

I live down close to the ferry and if I'm traveling to the south, I refuse to do what we call down here, go around.

Which means having to fight my way through Wilmington, Dover, just to get down to where I could have been if I had taken the ferry to the other side.

To avoid the drive-around, you needed a shorter route to Delaware.

You also needed Delaware legislators to agree to cooperate with the idea.

That cooperation is now called the Compact.

What the Compact says is that the two states can get together and create crossings across the bay.

And it takes that kind of legislation to get the ability to borrow money and create the entity that has to build a ferry or a bridge or whatever.

The seeds of the Compact took root in the years after the Second World War.

On a hot day in mid-August, the Delaware Memorial Bridge was dedicated.

The object they had watched grow from the dream of a Chamber of Commerce director in the 1920s to a sketch on a drafting board to the sixth longest bridge in the world was to be dedicated to... The Delaware Memorial Bridge was a resounding success when it opened in 1951.

And it made trade and transport between our two shores much, much easier.

But that success had its drawbacks.

The original plan was that once the bridge was paid off, it would just become part of the Delaware highway system.

And Delaware taxpayers would be responsible for maintaining the bridge.

Having just Delawareans pay for maintenance wasn't acceptable.

The idea was floated for a bi-state highway agency involving New Jersey.

New Jersey wasn't really interested in helping Delaware pay for the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

Officials there wanted something else.

Charlie Sandman, who was the state senator at the time, probably was the main motivator as far as getting the ferry started.

One of the main reasons he wanted to get cut down on the travel time to DC, and also to help the state of New Jersey and the state of Delaware, right, and the economy.

So he put two and two together, and he got the ferry started.

It was an uphill battle, but through hard effort and politicking and building coalitions and things that he could do as Senate President, he really leveraged that position to sort of encourage Northern Senators and also Delaware officials to get on board with the idea of the ferry.

The New Jersey legislature passed a law to create a bi-state authority from our perspective, New Jersey's perspective.

It went to Delaware and it was debated and not supported, defeated.

There was negotiations then again over years to persuade both sides that it was going to be mutually beneficial.

The Delaware people were skeptical about the financing because they weren't, they couldn't get anybody to say this is what it's going to cost.

Enter Congressman Harris McDowell who was a part of Delaware government in the early 1950s.

His son remembers.

He was asked to get involved in the second round and he was asked by the then governor if he would serve to get because since he had been so heavily involved in the first negotiation with New Jersey.

The push worked.

Delaware passed the deal.

New Jersey was on board and because two states were involved, Congress needed to approve the compact that created the Delaware River and Bay Authority.

It was a significant act.

The timing was perfect.

I think it would be a lot harder to put a deal between the two states together today than it was then.

Yes, the compact was an act of political compromise.

In 1962, that wasn't a dirty word.

The thing that was probably pushed it faster than we would have expected was the bridge tunnel crossing in Virginia.

What are they going to do with their ferries?

And so somebody said, "Why don't you buy the ferries from Virginia?"

Sounds like a good idea, you know?

The Cape May-Lewes Ferry as we know it today came into existence in 1964 because of the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel.

It connected the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula to the rest of the Virginia coast.

Before that time, it was connected by a ferry system.

There's been ferry systems here since the colonial times.

Just up the bay a mile or so is Cherrystone.

That was the main port for this part of the county back in the 16-1700s.

Virginia's ferries were tied to the development of railroad service and a growing economy.

In 1885 is when the railroad came to Cape Charles, part of a north-south route.

It was called the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad back then.

It ultimately became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad System.

So there were steamers coming in, picking up railroad passengers and ferrying them 30 or so miles across the bay to Norfolk.

In 1918, 1919, and 1920, the three wealthiest counties in the United States were Los Angeles, California, Acomac County, Virginia, and Northampton County, Virginia.

Because of the plethora of produce that was raised on Virginia's eastern shore that could be railed to the markets in the northeast, it became a cash cow of agriculture.

As the economy boomed, new ferries were added over time.

The Pocahontas, the Princess Anne, the Delmarva, and the Virginia Beach.

The ferries primarily moved people after World War II.

But it was the construction of the bridge at Annapolis and the Delaware Memorial Bridge that turned the tide away from ferries.

The governor realized that a fixed crossing would add to the abundance of the economics in regards to being able to get the markets connected from the northeast to the southeast.

That's how the thing kind of moved from here up there.

When the bridge tunnel was built, the ferries were no longer needed.

Ferries are for people that like ferries.

There was a lot of pressure to build a bridge tunnel.

When it did open, the ferries had no place to go except Delaware.

It started out being the Virginia Ferry Corporation.

It was just a corporation.

People were demanding a bridge tunnel or a bridge or whatever.

The state of Virginia got involved in it.

They took the ferries over and from there they just started doing everything they could to get it started and sell the bonds.

Virginia was organizing to transition from running a ferry to building a bridge.

A governing body was put in place.

They needed over 200 million dollars, big money at the time.

They also had to get rid of the old ferries.

Everyone realized that those vessels had a very positive salvage value.

They could be utilized in another area.

And that's when the agreement was signed in 1963 for four of the vessels to actually be sold to the Cape May-Lewes Ferry.

It came at just the right time.

The bridge corporation needed the money.

They found a buyer to the north.

The proceeds from the sale of the ferry to Cape May-Lewes Ferry was substantially advantageous for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel to be able to have extra seed funding for the operation.

This is a copy of the original bill of sale.

In the end, for $3.3 million, the Cape May-Lewes Ferry got its boats.

What was originally the Pocahontas became the Delaware.

The Princess Anne became the New Jersey.

And then the Delmarva, which was the oldest of the ferries, became the Cape May.

And Virginia got its bridge.

It was considered at the time to be one of the seven man-made wonders of the world.

North Channel is one of the deepest channels for its width east of the Mississippi.

It provides 90 to 95 feet of channel depth for the actual commercial boaters.

There's a Delaware connection to these ferries.

The Cape Charles here was built by Harlan and Hollingsworth in 1885.

Two of these ferries, the Pocahontas and the Delmarva were built by Jones and Fusey, which is a Wilmington shipbuilding company.

Yeah, there's a heavy connection there.

Construction in Lewis and in Cape May was underway in the winter of 1964.

The winter was brutally cold and crews were on a very tight construction timetable.

We started on a job about the third week of February 1964.

The job was almost completed when I left after Labor Day in 1964 in September.

One of the big problems was that there's deeper water at either end of the Chesapeake than there is here.

In Virginia, those boats were in 13 feet of water.

They were still dredging.

They were still dredging in here.

They were dredging in Lewes.

They were dredging on the shoal.

The construction was going on.

It was like I used to look at it and say, what am I doing?

You know, are you crazy?

A test launch of a ferry between Cape May and Lewes was conducted in October of 1962.

It was well received.

The dignitaries dedicated the official ferry on June 30th, 1964 with the public launch the next day.

The first ferry runs were an adventure for everyone.

What's the most memorable thing you can tell me about the ferry?

The first trip when it got caught in the wires on the other side and we were hung up for five hours.

For the very first time the ferry crossing was a problem.

A big problem.

One of the ferries, the first ferry crosses, he hit a line that had these buoys and it went right around its propeller.

And they got into the terminal but they couldn't go back because they'd catch the ferry.

They had to get on the line around the ferry.

I was on one and a friend of mine was on the other one.

And he was on the cable.

That's the one that went into Lewis and got the cable caught in the wheel.

I was on the hand-open.

I'll never forget that day, really.

He went in there before I did.

And I followed him and I made this statement.

I said, "Dillon might have gotten here one time, but I don't think he's gonna make it the next."

Because there were buoys, there were cables, there was everything all over.

Did you feel like everyone was watching you?

Yes.

They probably were, too.

My husband was president of the Senate.

He invited all the state senators and their wives to take the first ferry ride.

And we planned to have a nice cookout at my home after the fair.

We got stuck on the other side.

So we were sitting there and sitting there and finally they had private planes come and fly us back.

And some of the women were really very upset.

They had never flown in a small plane before.

But they did.

And we got back and we had our affair and it worked out very well.

At the end of the day, one image remains.

In 1964, when I was six years old, I was in the boat parade for the inauguration of the ferry with my father and several other people, which was really a big deal at that time.

The main thing is to have a fairly decent crew that you can delegate different authorities to to take care of things so that I can keep my mind on driving the boat back and forth.

♪ ♪ I go right over here.

Checking the oil, ensuring that the engines are warm and heated throughout the night so that they start up smoothly in the morning.

We would generally start these engines up.

Check all of our pressures once the engines are running and operational inside the control booth here where we have all of our various gauges to read our pressures.

This is our main console here in the engine room.

We send the controls up to the bridge for the captain for maneuvering.

[music] [birds chirping] [music] Just one way, okay.

You're going to go to the right lane number 11.

[music] We're going to make three round trips.

It's going to be a 12-hour day.

[music] Yes, Captain, this is Travis.

Are you ready for the controls?

We're ready.

thanks.

Thanks you.

Thanks for that.

Doc, when you're clear, we can put the ramp up.

He'll back out and he'll turn around.

And when he gets in Lewes, he'll have to turn around again and back in because that's the only way the cars can go.

Is there a point that everyone knows this is the point where you're going to turn around?

Yes, pretty well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what if you miss it?

You try it again.

I missed it a few times.

[music] You see this little outline here of metal?

That's how you can tell when you're right there.

We're going to get a little closer.

We're going to take a 15 minute ride into Cape May.

First we're going to drop you off at the Welcome Center at Chamber of Commerce.

Next stop is Outlet 2 Bayside.

[Music] [Horn] [Music] Let's do it, come on.

They come from the cities and they come from the small town Speed up the cars and guitars and drums going crack, boom, bang R-O-C-K in the USA R-O-C-K in the USA R-O-C-K in the USA, yeah, yeah Rockin' in the USA We don't say goodbye to the family, we say goodbye to the friends.

With their pipe dreams in their heads and very little money in their hands.

Lewes Ticket Counter to the Twin Capes Twin Capes, go ahead Your passenger count out of Lewes was 244.

244.

244, thank you.

Have a good night.

Have your attention please.

This is the boarding announcement for the 9.30 departure.

This departure is a one-way sailing and will not return to Delaware.

We wish you a pleasant crossing and thank you for taking a break from the ordinary.

[School bell ringing] Lights are out.

All doors are closed.

The front door is locked.

[music] [school bell rings] [whistling] [music] Now we should have power.

My cousin-in-law took us to a beach and he says, "It's just sand and water, but the sun is coming up."

Oh the sunrise was fantastic.

I think the first half of the 50 years were mostly about commerce.

It was decidedly a transportation function.

We're in the construction business in Ocean City, Bethany Beach, Georgetown, Salisbury, Berlin.

And we have three tractor and trailers that we haul seafood and we haul the shells out of Port Norris, New Jersey, for the farmers here on the eastern shore.

His friends call him Boogie.

His trucks have been using the ferry for a couple decades.

He has a routine.

We leave 3.30 in the morning and we get over to Port Norris at 6.00.

We load then we go to the Cape May-Lewes Ferry.

We're there within a half hour and then we wait for the first ferry to come across to Lewes, Delaware.

Then we get over to Lewes, we take Route 9 and come into Millsboro, Delaware.

Then on in to our little home place there, our base.

It costs him $71 to do that route with the ferry.

It would cost him twice that much if he drove around.

His drivers appreciate the routine.

I love it.

I love water, I love boats and I said I'd love coming across there, you know.

It gives you a little break from driving.

We're a link up of Route 9.

Route 9 in New Jersey is the Route 9 here in Delaware.

If the original mission of the Cape May-Lewis ferry was to get people and goods from point A to point B, then the modern purpose is to add tourism.

Well, every time you hear Lewes, they'll always mention the ferry, by the ferry or, you know, go into the ferry or whatever.

The fact that you have a ferry nearby, you know, everything's pretty much within 10 miles, 10 minutes.

That gives our visitors yet something else to do while they're here.

The administration of the ferry has been integral to helping all of the Sussex County towns.

We can work together to benefit each town so that in the summertime, particularly when the tourism rates are the highest, and we get a rainy day here and people have been here for several days, we can say, "Well, have you ever been to Cape May before?"

The business pitch these days is to keep vacationers engaged.

There's a dollar value attached to each tourist.

$100 per person.

$100 per day.

We're a day visitor, so I came in for the day and I filled my gas tank or maybe I took the ferry over.

I purchased lunch and some other retail product.

Average, $100 a day for that day visitor.

For Lewis, it's a chance to boast about its history.

Tours are given through town and the surrounding area.

They take them out to Cape Henlopen State Park where Fort Miles, which was a World War II fort, is there and they show them some of the other maritime related places to visit here in Lewes.

People do walk from the ferry.

They come over from New Jersey on foot, cheaper to ride the ferry on foot anyway, and then walk to our park to utilize it for the day or what not and then ride back.

When you think about the investments that we have made in bike paths and trails over the years.

Having the ferry gets more people over here because they want to ride our fantastic trails, they get to see all that we have to offer.

The great thing about Cape Henlopen State Park is people come from all over.

Come over on the ferry, basically walk, you know right there.

It's just so accessible which we think is really terrific.

We have 9,000 acres worth of trails.

I have one right outside my office called the Salt Marsh Trail.

People don't realize that we have wonderful trails here.

We have more to offer than just the beach.

1964, the ferry opens.

What does that mean to tourism in Cape May?

One of the things that was important is that it brought tourists from the south, which was not a usual occurrence for us.

The ferry's been very creative in marketing the things that you can do by riding the ferry so that it continues to be an attraction for people to come here.

We have a twin capes tourism group that gets together pretty regularly.

We were talking last year, our whole thing was, you know, extend your stay, take a trip across the bay.

Wyland says it's a push that works both ways.

Delaware residents get to see Victorian Cape May.

Those coming from New Jersey can go to the outlets.

When the Virginia Bridge opened in early 1964, there were ads all over the place touting the future.

One of those was from Delaware, who invited all those traveling north to experience the first state.

The link is still there today.

It's important for travelers to be aware that want to continue along the coastal link that they can leave this facility, go north on Route 13 to 113 in Pocomoke, take 113 if they want to stay near the coast in Delaware and in New Jersey and take the Cape May-Lewes Ferry.

And at least now we know how many miles it is to Lewes from the bottom of the Delmarva Peninsula.

Of course, if you get there at night, you might find tourists of an unexplained kind.

I was here late at night helping my sister clean and she she says, "Patsy, there's been some unusual things going on around here."

So I had experienced myself when I was helping her where a dryer was going off by itself in the men's bathroom.

Toilets flushing, faucets going off.

We actually had a manager who comes here early in the morning see a shape walking around, a tall shape with a cape and long hair.

The plaque outside the Lewis Terminal explains some of this activity.

The terminal was a burial ground for every seaman who was lost at sea.

Their bodies washed up on shore and buried right here.

The plaque also caught the attention of Delmarva Historic Haunts.

I started questioning the staff.

They didn't know what I was doing.

I was just trying to see if there was any ghost stories.

This video is the end result of all of those ghost stories.

I've never seen anything white like that.

It glowed.

It turned into different shapes.

It went into a ball and went that way.

Eight cameras set up on a foggy, rainy night in March caught the image.

The whole event lasted 20 seconds.

We saw it.

We have it on film.

And I can't debunk it.

Because we try to debunk it first, you know.

But when you can't debunk something, I got something on film.

And it's not a reflection.

This is the room during the daytime.

Whatever this is, it likes to hang out in the kitchen, knocking over pots or checking out the bookstore.

Somehow the ghost books get knocked on the floor.

Now, it's just part of business as usual.

A few times a year we actually have what we call a paranormal event.

Delmarva Historic Homes participates and has their group come.

We offer this to the public.

About 60 people can come at a time.

The ghosts haven't asked for a take of receipts.

The DRBA anticipated that the ferry would pay for itself within a few years.

The report shows sort of an outline of going forward, I believe, until the end of the 20th century.

That didn't quite happen.

The finances of DRBA are challenging as they are for every organization.

You know, bridges are incredibly expensive to maintain.

Ferries are really expensive to maintain.

Ridership has fluctuated over the years.

Fares taken on the ferry don't cover all of the expenses.

The ferry depends on the tolls taken from the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

56 or 57 percent of the ferry's revenues coming from the fare box.

We like to say at the River and Bay Authority all the revenues come from the tolls, but at the ferry the revenues come from both the ferry tolls and from the bridge tolls.

When the cost analysis for ferry operations was projected, it was hoped the ferry would break even or even turn a profit.

It actually went into the black in the late 70s.

But since there's no way to predict ridership, the ferry knows it can't count on the fare box for everything.

Over the years, that has strengthened the philosophy that the ferry provides a service.

If you want to go to Cape Bay or Wildwood and you live in Sussex County, that's a pretty good deal.

Now as time has changed, they have to raise the tolls on the ferry a little bit or not a lot, but that's all part of the game.

We're always able to say there's a cheap boat ride and it is comparably cheap with all of the other means of getting on boats down here.

You want to rent something.

You want to go on a fishing charter.

You want to do anything like that.

It's a whole lot more than getting on the ferry for a three hour round trip.

And people do that.

The ferry is like an economic lifeblood for this area.

It is no surprise to me that most of the people are on the ferry are coming in this direction which we understand because people want to come visit Delaware.

There's so many things for them to see.

So many things for them to do.

It's probably too simplistic to call the ferry a business loss leader.

However if officials wanted a profit profitable ferry it would come at a great cost.

If this were a completely commercial operation a commercial operator would operate four months out of the year pick the four months when the ferries are full operate with a part-time staff and this would be a very profitable operation.

But you'd have eight months out of the year where you wouldn't have a connection between the two capes.

We were just really lucky.

My daughter and I were standing right up on the prow and she gets hit with a butterfly.

And we're out here quite a ways.

Just landed right on it.

She said, "Dad, look."

And she pulls it away and it's on her hand and jumps back on her.

And another one goes by the side of her head.

Another one goes.

And we look up and there's hundreds of butterflies in front of us.

Over a billion miles traveled, some memorable incidents have happened.

Like this one from February 1982.

In the process of boarding the vehicles, a tractor-trailer had lost its brakes.

Even though it was moving slowly, it contacted the car in front of it, which was a Volkswagen Rabbit, pushed it to the edge on the stern.

The chains that were there to prevent such an occurrence weren't strong enough.

The chains were broken and the rabbit went into the bay.

Fortunately, there were no humans in the rabbit.

The person that owned the rabbit had their dog in the rabbit.

We had to get divers.

We brought a crane on board just to find the thing.

There was an article in the next day's paper that said, "Rabbit dies, dog saved."

It had a happy ending.

Over a billion miles, you're also going to run into some bad weather and scary moments.

Delaware Bay has always been known as a particularly hazardous body of water.

And actually, before the Outer Banks got the designation or the moniker of Graveyard of the Atlantic, this area, Cape Penloppen and Lewis in the mouth of the Delaware was known as a treacherous ground and actually referred to as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

When the wind gets up over 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour, you have to give a lot of consideration to suspending operations until that wind dies down.

The weather with the sea conditions and everything would cause us to have to deviate from the courses that normally would take a straight shot across.

Now we had a kind of quarter to seize a certain way and come back and zigzag across.

I think it's a little more difficult in Lewes because of the direction of the piers where you have to go in there and dock a northerly wind like it's almost like right straight up and down the dock.

Ferry operations are dependent on the weather.

Not every day is going to be perfect.

High winds stop operations completely.

On this day, the rain and fog present their challenges.

With restricted visibility, you pretty much gotta watch the radar and look out the window.

We got a buoy right in front of us and we got a boat coming at us right in front of us and I'm watching them on the radar just keeping an eye on what's going on around us.

If summers are about wind and rain, then winter is about wind and cold.

The winter of 2014 was brutal.

Ice covered the Cape May Canal several times.

We're talking winds up to 45, 50 miles an hour.

Temperatures minus 10, minus 15 degrees with the wind chill.

Yeah, brutal.

The Cape Henlopen is the go to ferry built for winter.

When we had her built, we had a reinforced bow put on so that we could go through the ice.

During one winter, a ferry was iced in for five hours.

Captains are looking more carefully at the weather, knowing a missed run means an economic hit.

In the end, it all gets done, and the next boat is ready to head out.

At this time we're making our approach into Cape May.

We ask that all drivers and passengers please start making your way back to your vehicles in preparation for this embarking festival.

Then there was the day a ferry rescued a cruise ship.

The Regent Star on its way up river apparently had a power failure.

I got a call at home from the captain of the Port of Philadelphia Coast Guard.

He indicated that they had had a cruise ship run aground up in the bay, upper bay, had a thousand passengers or so on board.

She was there maybe for a day or so.

They were hoping to get it off with tugs.

She was resting on the anchor with fuel tanks above with a lot of passengers and a forecast for stormy weather.

The Coast Guard was very concerned and they asked if we would send one of the ferries up there to evacuate the passengers.

We came back to the terminal, got people and sailed on up to where the Regent Star was.

We were met with a tugboat up there that assisted me in getting the ferry up alongside the Regent Star where her cargo door met our bow.

And it worked out pretty well.

As we approached the side of the cruise ship, a clown was on a unicycle and he was running up and down the top deck.

That gave me some inkling about what was to happen.

This took place maybe two or three in the afternoon and I never got off the ferry until we got back to Cape May till about four in the morning.

It was a long, long night.

Tonight we're celebrating our 25th anniversary and we were down for our honeymoon and we thought it would be nice to do it again on our 25th.

Tradition.

Did this for our honeymoon.

We're back for 25 and hopefully we'll be back for 50 or even sooner.

Better be sooner.

The honor will require many pictures alone.

Early in 2014, the 43rd millionth passenger was honored for traveling on the Cape May Lewis Ferry.

It was a little more low key than the celebration for the billionth traveler over the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

Over the years, both places have marked milestones.

In the case of the bridge, a Wildwood man made the record books, though he didn't understand why at first.

When I got close to it, there was a man in a suit there.

I thought for sure my E-ZPass expired or some problem with it, maybe I've been cheating on my E-ZPass or something.

Jeff Wright makes the trip from Wildwood to Wilmington two to three days a week.

The time of day he leaves may vary.

His timing in December 2012 put him in the record books.

The person in the suit reached out of the toll booth and says, "Do you have a few minutes?"

It's like, "Uh, yeah."

Then he said, "Well, you're the billionth driver over this bridge, and we'd like to award you some prizes and get you on camera for a minute."

Wright was selected based on the calculations of a University of Delaware Business and Finance student, Stephen McDonald.

For Wright, he knows he's received his 15 minutes of fame, but he still pinches himself when he thinks about it.

The ferry is a magnet for milestones.

The Cape May side of ferry operations has a large room for gatherings.

It's where we found the Dengler family of Radnor.

They were honoring a family member, a nun, who was home for a visit.

The ferry itself also holds different memories for other people.

I'm Holly Gilmartin.

I'm from Wilmington, Delaware, and we got engaged on the ferry.

And I'm Michael Gilmartin, and I'm from Hockessin, Delaware, and we got engaged on the Cape May Lewes ferry.

Their engagement involved a robot and a ferry trip chartered by a friend's company.

Everyone was in on the engagement announcement except Holly.

They pulled off an elaborate ruse to put everyone in a ring, making it awkward for Holly to get across the dance floor.

I stood on the far side of the circle.

When Jon brought Holly down, he told Holly to go sit across the other side of the circle next to her mom, which forced her to walk across the circle.

So as she was walking across the circle, I came across the circle and intercepted her.

As I was making my way across the floor through the circle, my husband intercepted me kind of halfway and knelt down and I thought he wanted to sit there and I said to him what are you doing?

We you can't sit here and then he said asked loudly for everybody's attention.

And the rest as they say is history.

He popped the question.

She said yes.

Now the kids know more about how mom and dad got married.

For Rod and Andy Scott they decided they had to be married on a ferry trip.

Well we got married on Thursday of Labor Day weekend so it was August 29th 1996 and the MV Twin Capes was pretty new it had just been refurbished and it was kind of exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time because it was a regular crossing of the ferry.

So we had about 22 minutes 22 minutes more or less to be married legally.

We had to get on get set up and once the boat left we had 22 minutes to do the whole ceremony.

Because his authority to perform marriages was strictly in Delaware so we just jumped on there got the show on the road and then had a party for the rest of the time.

We wanted to do something festive and fun but not stupid or weird at a mini golf or whatever so that's when we started looking into some alternative locations.

Some memories of the ferry came before the first ship was launched.

My name is Bill Schimmel.

I worked on the Cape May ferry.

I was one of the first of the crew.

Schimmel took lots of pictures when he was building the Cape May terminal for the ferry.

But there's one story that he'll never forget.

I knew my wife was going to have a baby very shortly.

That day was a normal day.

I went to work and come four o'clock I went up to the field office to find out whether we were going to work overtime and I met the superintendent and He said oh by the way, I got a phone call this morning at nine o'clock and Your wife had a baby girl.

I said Yes, I Said it's four o'clock now.

What happened?

I forgot I just shook my head and turn around walk back to my job site.

Bill and his wife named her Dawn.

Thanks to dad we all know she's 50 years old.

After all these tales of the ferry's past here's a question about its future.

Will there ever be an alternative to the Cape May Lewes ferry?

Are you surprised that the ferry is still operational now?

Oh no, no, no.

Unless another bridge or another crossing is built, that ferry is here forever.

But I think another crossing will be done.

There were discussions about building the ferry or a second bridge instead of a ferry in mid-Jersey, in Cumberland County, to mid-Delaware, near Dover.

Certainly being able to drive up and just drive right across would probably be more convenient.

There were some studies done in the 90s to look at that and I remember at one point the people that did the study indicated that it would probably cost $75 for a car and driver.

It can be done.

I mean the technology is there to do it.

Is the market there?

I think not.

Well each year our seniors, as a requirement for graduation, have to come up with a project and design it, show the cost and show the feasibility and make presentations.

Joe Martin is a transplanted Bostonian and for years has been a part of Drexel University's engineering department.

His students are better known for their annual concrete canoe race.

But in 2000, a group of students had an idea for a class project.

Five of the seniors had come to me and said, "We think there's a need for a crossing of Delaware Bay."

And I said, "Why does anyone want to cross Delaware Bay?"

The proposal outlines a $6 billion project with immersed tube tunnels and bridges.

Their pitch?

That eventually road construction on the East Coast will max out.

Another route would be necessary.

And it would be difficult to even think about building an upridge or a tunnel because it's a lot more goes into it than people realize.

You know you just don't go from Cape May Point to Cape Penelope and you know you got the approach roads and everything.

So the theory my guys had in 2000 which is still a good theory is that we'll provide the long distance route from New York to Washington on Norfolk an alternative one which would be the equivalent of adding lanes on the 95.

Martin says it would take three years to be built.

Could it happen.

I haven't spent a whole lot of time investigating the feasibility of an additional bridge crossing.

I would have to say we've got a great bridge crossing at the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

We've got a great ferry here.

So if the Drexel idea won't float what does the future hold for the ferry.

Some predictions in the future.

They're going to be smaller and faster vessels I think and more efficient operations.

You're going to see boats that can travel faster make more crossings.

I wouldn't be surprised if we were down to three in the future with three boats that are faster.

What about the states the ferry serves.

It's really changed the way that we think about downstate Delaware and southern New Jersey.

The future of the ferry is going to be connecting people from two communities.

If you think back 50 years the people of two communities who had historic connections and maybe some historic fears about each other decided to take a leap and to try a connection.

My guess is 25 years from now that historic connection will still be there probably not with the same boats and maybe even still that same little bit of fear because everybody's not quite sure what's going to happen.

A touch of fear sure but that hasn't been the dominant emotion that has accompanied the ferry over its billion mile journey.

Those feelings are more positive as in the pitch that was made for the ferry over 50 years ago.

The sea is the home for the Cape May-Lewis Ferry.

Just over an hour from New Jersey to Delaware, with your engine turned off.

A fast and pleasant route between the north and the south.

If I had to tell my friends anything I would say just go do it, experience it.

It's an experience cruising across the bay, the beautiful scenery, you get the sunset over here and you have just a beautiful destination, you have Delaware.

[Music] [Music] Billion Mile Journey, the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, is partially funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state program of the National Endowment for Humanities, and through the generous support of the C.E.

Bennett Foundation and contributions to WHYY by viewers like you.

Thank you.