REHOBOTH BEACH, DE (CBS) — Rehoboth Beach is known for its extraordinary entertainment, dance and drag dinner theater, and its mile-long boardwalk bursting with eclectic shops and restaurants overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
The seaside town of Sussex County, Delaware is not only a popular getaway for families, but has also long been a thriving mecca for the LGBTQ+ community.
“I can’t imagine that most people wouldn’t put Rehoboth somewhere on the list of gay meccas in the United States,” says Tim Ragan, owner of the Blue Moon in Rehoboth.
The Rehoboth of today is a far cry from how the city first started. The town was founded in the 1870s as a Methodist meeting camp.
“Around the 1960s, a group of gay people started pouring into this area,” says Fay Jacobs, a historian and gay rights activist.
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Jacobs says the Pink Pony was a popular meeting place early on, and Rehoboth became a gay enclave at a time when homosexuality was not legal.
“So there were dinner parties in houses with the curtains drawn and they didn’t draw attention to themselves, and that was really true until the late ’70s,” Jacobs said.
Then the Blue Moon opened on Baltimore Avenue in 1981 as a gay bar and safe haven.
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“The town just kept getting happier and happier. I mean, people came from all over. We had two big dance clubs and a lot of restaurants at that time,” said Murray Archibald, co-founder of KAMP Rehoboth.
In the 1990s, many longtime residents felt that the quaint beach town was being taken over by the influx of homosexuals. That tension led Archibald to co-found Create A More Positive (CAMP) Rehoboth with his late husband, which became a resource center for the gay community.
“That has been our goal all along, that we are all welcome here,” Archibald said.
Rehoboth has always been a haven for beachgoers from Washington DC, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. Today, visitors from all over the country come to what is now known as the country’s summer capital.
“We’re just all absolutely integrated and part of the community of diversity. There are so many different people here,” Jacobs said.
Today there are countless gay-owned businesses, and it’s a place where you feel comfortable in your own skin.
According to CAMP Rehoboth, the small beach town is still a family town, but for all kinds of families.
