Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area

Hoist a sail aboard a skipjack or schooner, tour lighthouses of the Chesapeake Bay, or watch the sunset from restaurants endowed with seafood catches right off the boat.

 

Watch eagles fly at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge or see otters at play in Tuckahoe State Park Discover the native trees and plants and bluebirds at Adkins Arboretum and Wye Island, learn birding at Pickering Creek National Audubon Center or the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center.

 

At the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, discover stories of oyster wars, crab jubilees, and folklore from centuries of men and women working this watery landscape.

 

Follow country roads in the "highlands" to the north, or experience the scenic flatlands and wetlands of the Underground Railroad corridor along the Choptank River. Explore the distinctive island and maritime landscapes here easily by car.

 

Get wet! Try the water trails around Tilghman Island, rent kayaks at Winchester Creek, Rock Hall, or Easton, join in the crazy raft parade at Chestertown’s annual Tea Party.

 

Step back into time enjoy historic colonial port towns. Trace colonial highways as you tour colonial and early American churches and some of the oldest buildings still standing in America, including the Old Wye Mill and Third Haven Friends Meeting House.

 

Learn about the fascinating prehistoric past of this unusual region, once the highlands of the now-drowned pre-Ice Age Susquehanna River, now filled to the brim as the Chesapeake Bay, one of the world’s richest estuaries.

 

Discover how life along this estuary has always been rich and filled with cultural treasures, from its first settlement 13,000 years ago to the American Indians encountered by John Smith in the Age of Exploration, from the golden years of the Age of Sail to today’s “land of pleasant living.”

 

The Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area is a major part of the last great American colonial landscape on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Known to historians as the Breadbasket of the American Revolution and considered one of the oldest remaining working landscapes in North America, the region is still a wealthy grain-growing area, the largest single area of agricultural lands left on the Atlantic coast. It is also one of the most protected landscapes outside the American West.

 

Come meet the people who live here today - enjoy the landscapes and towns they treasure - share the best of their traditions, arts, and foods - shop in charming shops - stay overnight in one of dozens of country inns and bed-and-breakfast lodgings. Wherever you go, you will enjoy the relaxed and welcoming atmosphere of “the Eastern Shore Experience.”

 

                                                    

Places to go and things to see.

1. Visitors enjoy a tour of the Archaeology Lab at the Custom House (1754), Washington College's unique historic property on Chestertown's waterfront. The Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area is committed to supporting public archeology programs in the region - where sites as old as 13,000 years old have been discovered. Washington College itself is historic, as the first college founded in the new nation, with George Washington as one of its sponsors. (Photo courtesy of the Washington College Archaeology Lab)

 

2. The Tucker House (c. 1792), a house museum in Centreville preserved by the Queen Anne's County Historical Society, is one of a large number of gambrel-roofed Colonial and Federal-era homes built across the county. It was a spacious town house in its day, with six rooms and six working fireplaces. Visitors touring it today enjoy period furnishings and memorabilia, a collection of rose medallion china, and an herb garden.

 

3. A superb example of the Queen Anne style of ecclesiastical architecture and also one of the most carefully preserved Victorian-era churches in Maryland, Christ Church in Stevensville attests to Kent Island’s importance as the cradle of the Anglican (Episcopal) Church in Maryland – being the site of the earliest Anglican congregation in the colony. The Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area possessed four different Christian denominations during the Colonial era, a rare instance of early religious pluralism - in addition to Epicopalians (Anglicans before the Revolutionary War), settlers worshipped as Catholics, Quakers, and Methodists.

 

4. The Choptank River Heritage Center (CRHC) is located in a historic schooner and steamboat warehouse at the restored Joppa Steamboat Wharf (pictured with the Flora A. Price) on the upper Choptank River in West Denton. At 70 feet the largest surviving skipjack on the Chesapeake Bay, the Flora is now a floating classroom. The CRHC is the centerpiece of a multi-million dollar community development project called the Wharves at Choptank Crossing.

 

5. Rock Hall is one of dozens of small towns and villages that dot the landscape of the Heritage Area, each with many stories to tell. One of the largest watermen's villages, Rock Hall enjoys a working waterfront alongside restaurants, a unique community performance space called the Mainstay, a guide shop selling or renting kayaks, an old drugstore soda fountain, and small shops and galleries.

 

6. Wooden boats abound throughout the Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area, from this simple fishing boat on the Corsica River, to skipjacks at Dogwood Harbor on Tilghman Island, to the replica tall ship berthed at Chestertown, the schooner SULTANA. The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels offers families opportunities to build dories and learn how boatbuilders and communities adapted to the unique waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

 

7. The intertwining of land and water in the Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area meant easy access for Colonial settlers in the Age of Sail - the Chesapeake Bay was a major interchange on the global highways of the 18th century. Today's beautiful landscape still shows the influence of those early years. (View of Wye River, Wye Island in foreground.)

 

8. The Inn at Easton in the Easton's large National Register historic district is one of many restaurants in the Stories of the Chesapeake where visitors can enjoy fine dining. No visitor should leave without experiencing delicious local foods, from the Wye Mill's stoneground cornmeal (sold at the Easton Farmers Market) to the catch of the day on the waterfront - and a host of other possibilities everywhere.

 

9. The James Webb Cabin (1852) near Preston is a rare historic property preserved by the Caroline County Historical Society, a one-room log home built by a free black settler in an area where the Underground Railroad was highly active. Acquired not only for preservation but also for study by scholars, this cabin represents the many simple homes known to have been common in the region, but few survive. History buffs who visit the Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area can see and touch many such "doorways into time" -- more than 100 sites and structures have been preserved, many by volunteers, for education and public access. Dozens more -- such as courthouses and churches -- are original buildings still in service from the 18th and 19th centuries.

 

10. Visitors to the Adkins Arboretum at the heart of Tuckahoe State Park in Caroline County can see and learn about native trees and plants of the Delmarva Peninsula's uplands and forested wetlands. They can also walk the arboretum's 12 miles of trails that lead to still more trails maintained by the park, and see the large bluebird population in spring and summer. "The Arb" offers native plants for sale, lecture series, volunteer opportunities, and art shows by local artists who are inspired by the beautiful natural world of the Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area.

 

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