Chesapeake's Western Shore: Vintage Vacationland

By Lara L. Lutz

In 1952, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened for travelers in Maryland and created unprecedented access from the mainland to the Eastern Shore and the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean. Before then, the Chesapeake Bay itself was the seaside for residents of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Popular bay-side vacation spots sprang up in Maryland during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and began to transform the rural fringes of the Chesapeake s Western Shore. People journeyed by railroad, steamboat, and automobile to escape the sweltering city summers and to swim, fish, and boat along the bay. Amusement parks, casinos, and dance halls enlivened the scene. Developers actively promoted the sale of summer cottages near resort areas that dotted the Patapsco, Magothy, Severn, and South Rivers, as well as the open bay, and laid the roots for many communities that still exist today. The images presented in this book evoke a shared heritage in the pleasures of the Chesapeake Bay and depict an era that triggered permanent changes along its shores.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Mar 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781439619766

Lara L. Lutz

Author Lara L. Lutz, a Maryland resident, writes about the health and history of the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers for the Bay Journal and other publications.

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

Colonial history in the Chesapeake Bay region centers on water and for good reason. The bay and its rivers were literally the highways of the era. They provided access to settlements, towns, and trade routes that was faster and easier than any rough-hewn road through dense forests or low-lying marshes. Settlements clung to the water’s edge. Houses faced the water, because that was the direction from which visitors arrived.

As the nation evolved, cities like Baltimore and Richmond thrived on bay commerce and grew into urban centers. Many people gravitated to these cities for work and were joined there by large numbers of immigrant families. Still others moved inland as roads improved and multiplied. The edges of the Chesapeake Bay became largely the domain of farmers, watermen, and their families, who shared an intense and intimate knowledge of their land and small communities.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the flourish of industrial production that created so many urban opportunities also made city summers hot, crowded, and unhealthy. But new transportation options were helping an increasing number of people to make a seasonal escape. Trains and steamboats took people farther into the countryside fairly quickly, at a reasonable cost; automobiles offered independence as well as mobility. As a result, more city dwellers began looking over their shoulders and back toward the Chesapeake Bay. Its clean air and clear water beckoned vacationers and developers alike.

This was especially true in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., where residents sought relief from city summers and still lived relatively close to the bay’s rural shores. Many resort and beach communities appeared in Maryland on both the Eastern Shore and Western Shore from the late 1800s through the 1940s.

On Maryland’s Western Shore, popular vacation spots developed at choice spots along the open bay and on nearly every river, including the Patapsco, Magothy, Severn, South, and West Rivers in Anne Arundel County. Chesapeake Beach was a celebrated resort in northern Calvert County just south of the Anne Arundel County line.

Some were modest, making use of the bay’s countless creeks and coves, while others boasted dramatic locations with elaborate lodging and entertainment venues. Nearly all of them shared a policy that permitted only white Americans—and in some cases, white Protestant Americans—as guests and residents. African Americans, Jewish Americans, and other minorities were not allowed to use the beaches or build homes in the summer communities. But these groups also found places to enjoy the pleasures of the shore. The Fishing Club at Shady Side, for example, was largely organized by Jewish families from Washington. African Americans lived and recreated in places like Carr’s Beach, Columbia Beach, Highland Beach, Magothy Beach, and Sparrow’s Beach.

The federal call for racial integration contributed to the closure of some Western Shore beaches, as did the end of legalized slot machines in 1968. Another factor was the opening of the Bay Bridge in 1952. Just as transportation and road improvements created access to the Western Shore, the Bay Bridge gave new, easy access to resorts on the Atlantic Ocean. The Chesapeake Bay was no longer the seaside. This triple blow eventually ended the Western Shore’s reign as a vacation destination, but the era triggered changes that would alter the bay’s shoreline forever.

When cottage communities around the beaches began to lose their function as summer retreats, they remained anchored by small contingents of year-round residents with a permanent attraction to bayside living. These people were among the first generation of commuters to make a daily haul into Baltimore or Washington, a trip that is quite common today. Their sleepy neighborhoods sprang to life again during the last decades of the 20th century, when suburban sprawl attracted a new wave of residents and a new surge in the development of shoreline communities.

In 1952, this was a less than obvious ending to the changes observed by fifth-grade students at Mayo Elementary School, located near the end of the Mayo peninsula. As a school project, the students produced a 40-page community profile and speculated on their community’s future. On week-ends or holidays the public beaches are filled with day visitors, they wrote. However, we do not know whether or not the Chesapeake Bay Bridge will divert vacationers to the Eastern Shore. When the bridge opened last July there was a decided decrease at the public beaches in this vicinity. Whether or not this will be just a temporary trend, because of the newness of the bridge, remains to be seen.

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CITIES AND SHORELINES

Tumultuous change was taking place in American cities during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Improvements in transportation and industry impacted nearly every aspect of daily life, from automobiles and public transportation to a swelling workforce and an ever-growing selection of goods