By late September the bald eagles are back over the Nanticoke, the Sussex County corn is off, and the summer traffic that pushes the Woodland Ferry to around 225 vehicles a day has thinned out to farm trucks, school-run cars and the occasional driver who has come specifically to ride a boat that costs nothing. The crossing itself does not change with the seasons — there is no summer table and no winter table — but the reasons people use it do, and in the quiet months it goes back to being what it has always been: a piece of road with water in it.
The Delaware Department of Transportation owns and operates it, which is worth saying plainly because almost nothing about the place looks like a public agency at work. There is no terminal, no signage beyond the byway markers, no fare and nobody selling anything. A two-lane road in western Sussex County runs down to the Nanticoke about three and a half miles southwest of Seaford, and a six-car boat called the Tina Fallon takes whatever is waiting to the other side.
DelDOT counts roughly 45,000 crossings a year here. That is a genuinely useful number, because it puts the Woodland Ferry in an odd category: too busy to be a novelty, far too small to be a transport link anyone would build today. It survives because the alternative — a bridge over a tidal river in a place with a few hundred residents — has never been worth the money. It is also the only one of the Mid-Atlantic crossings here that a state highway department runs itself.
Weekdays only, minus an hour for lunch and a Thursday morning
Hours as published by DelDOT and read on September 22, 2026. DelDOT states them as current practice and attaches no start or end date. DelDOT — The Woodland Ferry · 2026-09-22
Free since 1883, and written into the act that made it public
Nobody collects anything at either slip, and that is not a modern courtesy. When the Delaware General Assembly handed the crossing to Sussex County in 1883, the act promised free passage to "all citizens of the State, with their teams" — and the wagons and carriages behind them — at any hour from sunrise to sunset. The county then decided simply not to charge anyone at all. Delaware has kept that arrangement through three changes of owner and at least five boats.
It is a useful thing to know before you arrive, because the ferry looks exactly like something that ought to have a toll booth, and drivers occasionally sit on the ramp waiting for one. Washington State reaches the same place from the other side of the continent at the Keller Ferry, where the boat is simply a numbered stretch of state highway.
| Car, pickup or van | Free |
| Foot passenger | Free |
Confirmed free by DelDOT on September 22, 2026 DelDOT — The Woodland Ferry: "There is no fee to use the ferry" · 2026-09-22
Right bank and left bank, in DelDOT's own words
Neither landing has a name, a building or an address. Both are simply the point where Woodland Ferry Road stops and the river starts, and DelDOT's historians distinguish them the way river people always have: right bank and left bank.
Right-bank landing, Woodland
This is the bank the village sits on, and DelDOT's own history calls it the right bank. Cannon Hall stands just up the road from the slip, the Woodland Methodist Church is behind it, and the state historical marker SC-173 — put up in 2004 — is a short walk away at 5613 Woodland Ferry Road. There is no ticket office and no barrier, because there is nothing to sell: you drive down the road, and the road happens to end at the water.
The approach from Seaford is the one most drivers use. DelDOT does not publish a postal address for the slip itself, and the ferry house telephone, 302-629-7742, is not staffed continuously, so the number that actually gets answered is Customer Relations on 800-652-5600.
Left-bank landing, toward Bethel and Laurel
The far slip is unmarked in the same deliberate way. Woodland Ferry Road picks up again on the southeast bank and carries on toward Bethel and then Laurel, which is why DelDOT describes the service as running between Seaford and Laurel even though neither town is anywhere near the water here.
Archaeologists went over both slips in 2007, before the rebuild that came with the new boat: sonar across the riverbed, ground-penetrating radar on land, and a run of test pits. They found nothing historic that the construction would damage, which is how the modern concrete got poured over a landing in use since the 1740s.
Less than 500 feet of Nanticoke, and 35 miles of byway around it
Measured between the two slips the water here is under 500 feet wide — closer to 480 — which is less than the distance many drivers cover queueing for it. The Nanticoke runs about 63 miles from its Sussex County headwaters to Tangier Sound in Maryland and stays tidal all the way past Seaford, so the water under the boat rises and falls even this far inland.
The crossing is also the pivot of Delaware's Nanticoke Heritage Byway, roughly 35 miles of road that DelDOT reckons at about 45 minutes of driving. The byway runs Seaford, ferry, Bethel, Laurel, and ends at Trap Pond State Park, which means a closed ferry breaks the signed route in half.
The gaps in a Woodland working day
- The lunch hour is real
The boat is out of service from 11 a.m. to noon every operating day. It is the single most common way to arrive at Woodland and find nothing moving.
- Thursday mornings are for maintenance
DelDOT closes the crossing on Thursday mornings for routine work. Afternoon service that day is normal.
- No weekend service
The ferry is closed Saturday and Sunday. If you are following the Nanticoke Heritage Byway at a weekend, you will be driving round through Seaford.
- Six cars, and no reservation system
The Tina Fallon takes six vehicles. Nobody takes a booking and nobody takes a payment; you join the line on the ramp and wait your turn.
- Weather and breakdowns close it outright
DelDOT names weather and mechanical interruptions as the reasons the ferry stops without warning, and tells motorists to check the status on the program page before travelling.
- Two numbers, one of them answered
The ferry house line is 302-629-7742, but DelDOT notes it is not continuously manned. Customer Relations on 800-652-5600 or 302-760-2080 is the number that reaches a person.
The Cannons, a murder on the wharf, and a Model T engine
The Cannon family ran this crossing for more than a century, and they were not popular. James Cannon started a ferry here somewhere between 1734 and 1748; by 1766 his son Jacob was being paid 1,500 pounds of tobacco in tax relief for keeping it. When Jacob died in 1780 his widow Betty took over, argued that she had spent considerable sums improving the wharves and the road, and in 1793 got the General Assembly to grant her and her son Isaac exclusive ferrying rights. Travelers complained for the next twenty years: in 1802 one wrote that there was no tavern, the scow was too small, and he had been asked to help with the rowing.
It ended violently. On April 10, 1843, Jacob Cannon Jr. stepped off his own ferry and was shot dead on the wharf by a man he had accused of stealing a hollow log full of honey. Isaac died a month later. A Sussex County neighbor recorded that the brothers went to their graves "unlamented and unmourned." Forty years after that the crossing passed to Sussex County, which bought a new boat and stopped charging.
The machinery caught up slowly. Crews poled and rowed the scow across until about 1930, when someone bolted a Model T Ford engine to the wooden boat, hooked it to the guide cable and let it winch itself over. The State Highway Department took charge in 1935 and bought a timber ferryboat in 1937, built at J.E. Friedel's yard in Seaford for under two thousand dollars. In 1961 Delaware spent fifty thousand on the Virginia C, a steel cable-guided boat with room for three cars; she worked the river for more than 46 years and was auctioned off in February 2008 for $24,300.
The Tina Fallon, and the boats that came before her
Practical questions about crossing at Woodland
Is the Woodland Ferry running right now?
On September 22, 2026 DelDOT's own program page said "The Woodland Ferry is Open." That page carries the department's status line and is the thing to look at before you drive down. Be aware that the automated status box embedded beside it was blank on that date — the traffic feed it reads no longer publishes the ferry's sign — so the written line and a call to 800-652-5600 are the reliable checks.
Do I pay anything to cross at Woodland?
No. DelDOT states there is no fee to use the ferry, for vehicles or on foot. The rule goes back to the 1883 act that made the crossing public, which required that citizens with their teams, wagons and carriages be carried free of charge between sunrise and sunset.
Why is the ferry shut in the middle of the morning on a Thursday?
Routine maintenance. DelDOT closes the crossing on Thursday mornings for it, then runs normally in the afternoon. It is the one closure that is not obvious from a glance at the operating hours.
Can I use the ferry on a Saturday?
Not at the moment. The published hours are Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and DelDOT says the ferry is closed on weekends. Weekend drivers following the Nanticoke Heritage Byway have to detour around through Seaford.
How many cars fit on the boat?
Six. The Tina Fallon was built in 2008 as a six-car ferry, replacing a three-car steel boat that had worked the river since 1961. There is no reservation system, so on a busy afternoon the wait is however many vehicles are ahead of you divided by six.
Which towns does this actually connect?
DelDOT describes it as carrying vehicles and foot passengers between Seaford and Laurel, and adds that traffic from Bethel and Blades uses it too. On the ground it is a country road crossing: Woodland and the Seaford approach on the right bank, and the road on toward Bethel and Laurel on the left.
Is there anything to see at the landing besides the boat?
Cannon Hall stands on the right bank near the slip, reputedly built around 1820 by Jacob Cannon for a bride who called the wedding off. The state historical marker SC-173 is at 5613 Woodland Ferry Road, and the Days Gone By Museum at number 4841 holds local material on the crossing.
How long has there been a ferry at this spot?
Since the 1740s, and possibly a decade earlier. DelDOT's historians have not fixed an exact date, but James Cannon's 1748 will already mentions a wharf and two houses here, and the Maryland assembly was recording payments for keeping the ferry by 1766.