Long Neck is a peninsula, not an incorporated town. It sits between Rehoboth Bay and Indian River Bay in Sussex County, Delaware, reached along Long Neck Road off DE-24 (John J. Williams Highway). Because it has no post office of its own, nearly every home and business on the peninsula carries a Millsboro, DE 19966 mailing address — even though Millsboro's downtown is about 10 miles inland, on the far side of the Indian River.
That single fact causes most of the confusion about the area. When we pulled Delaware's business-licence file for this directory, only a couple of dozen businesses in the core Long Neck footprint actually wrote "Long Neck" as their city. The overwhelming majority wrote Millsboro, because that is what the ZIP database says. Filtering by city name would have missed almost the entire market.
So what counts as Long Neck?
The peninsula runs south from Route 24, bounded by Indian River Bay to the east and Rehoboth Bay to the west, narrowing toward Massey's Landing at the mouth of the bay. It is a census-designated place — recognised for statistical purposes — but there is no town government, no mayor, and no boundary sign.
What is actually there
Long Neck's character comes from a handful of large manufactured-home and cottage communities, Pot-Nets being the best known, along with marinas, seasonal restaurants, and the retail cluster around the Shoppes at Long Neck and Silicato Drive. It is a retirement and second-home market built around boating, fishing and bay access, and the population swells sharply in summer.
Long Neck vs Millsboro vs Dagsboro
- Millsboro — an actual incorporated town roughly 10 miles west on the Indian River, with its own downtown and government.
- Dagsboro and Ocean View — separate incorporated towns to the south with their own ZIP codes, often swept into "Long Neck area" searches.
- Long Neck — the peninsula itself. No incorporation, one shared ZIP with a much larger area, and identified in practice by street name far more reliably than by the city field on any address.
That is exactly the logic behind this directory: we built it around the peninsula's ZIP and street footprint, not the city text on a mailing address.