Deer Park Tavern a Newark Favorite Among Generations

University of Delaware students, townies, bikers—and all their parents—have called this inn-turned-tavern home on more than a few occasions.

The Deer Park Tavern
Bob Ashby was deep into renovation of the tavern in 2001 when it hit him, the full depth and force of feeling for the 150-year-old inn he’d just bought. As a student at the University of Delaware in the early 1970s, he lived half a block away, so he passed it walking to and from class every day. He’d enjoyed a beer and a bite there many times. He witnessed the famous Deer Park Riot in 1974. And he met his wife there during a happy hour. Which made Ashby’s story exactly like so many told to him by people who had lived, worked and studied in Newark over the decades. “That place could easily have been torn down many times,” Ashby says. “That it’s still there on that corner just says volumes about what it means to people”—students, townies and bikers who still mix there as harmoniously as ever. 108 W. Main St., Newark, 369-9414, deerparktavern.com

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