Bethany. Sussex County operates the South Bethany Sanitary Sewer District, which provides sewer service to the town. Trash and recycling collection in South Bethany is provided by Republic Services. History Early history There is no record of Native American activity in what is now South Bethany, but Native Americans are known to have visited the bays and rivers of the Atlantic coast of Delaware during the summer to fish, and it is possible that this included visits to the South Bethany area. The portion of Delaware in which South Bethany lies was subject to a lengthy legal dispute, Penn vs. Baltimore, that broke out in 1683, as to whether the land belonged to the Province of Maryland or the Province of Pennsylvania. While it dragged on, William Penn granted the Delaware Colony its own legislature in 1701, establishing it as a separate colony. The dispute over the boundaries of the three colonies was not resolved until 1759, when the parties to the dispute agreed that the area where South Bethany now lies was part of Delaware. Outside of Penn vs. Baltimore, recorded European interest in the land that was to become South Bethany dates to at least 1687, when an Englishman, Matthew Scarborough, had much of the area of what are now Bethany Beach and South Bethany surveyed, the 500 acres (202 hectares) surveyed in the northern part of the area becoming known as "Scarborough's Adventure," while a parcel to its south became known as "Middlesex." He "took up" – i.e., took possession of – the two parcels of land in 1688, and they were renamed "North Petherton" and "South Petherton." The part of the area that would become South Bethany was included in a portion of South Petherton at the head of Little Assawoman Bay about south of what is now Bethany Beach granted to Scarborough under a Maryland land patent in 1695. English settlers established farms in parts of what is now South Bethany. In 1741, Englishman William Evans was granted a land patent under a survey that combined North and South Petherton into a single parcel of land. In 1926, George McClellan of Long Island, New York, bought four adjoining tracts of land in what is now South Bethany covering a combined 140 acres (56.7 hectares). McLellan conveyed the land to the Delaware Shore Land Corporation. Founding of South Bethany In 1952, the first span of the