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At the end of Mulberry Street, we found a place to sit and eat on the water at St. Michaels Crab and Steak House (see Dining, page ###). Munching on the local favorite – fried oyster sandwiches – we passed the time watching yachts and pleasure cruisers look for a place to tie up in the crowded marina. A pair of middle-aged bikers maneuvered huge Harley cruisers onto the dock. A water taxi filled with a dozen sightseers people passed by. Painted on the side: “25-minute scenic harbor tours: $6 adults, $3 kids.” A young family rented bicycles from a long row of bright blue bikes, lined up close to the dock’s edge, where piles of oysters once sat.

The restaurant, I learned, was built in the 1830s as an oyster-shucking shed. The iron anchors propped up in the landscaping outside once weighed down local oyster boats. I mused how this very spot where I sat was once the scene of the smelly, dirty work of unloading a waterman’s daily catch. My eyes wandered over luxury cruisers and yachts costing several times more than most people’s houses, tied to piers where not so long ago, salty, weatherworn workboats brought in their harvest.

St. Michaels, incorporated in 1804, prospered first as a shipbuilding center, then as a seafood processor of oysters and blue crabs. The 1829 opening of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal added new seafood customers in Philadelphia and Wilmington to the existing ones in Baltimore and Annapolis. St. Michaels shipbuilders became known for small, shallow draft boats like the bugeye and the log canoe. The steamboat era around the end of the 19th century brought tourists and another means of shipping seafood. One of the larger packers was an African-American-owned business, Coulbourne and Jewett, located on the site the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (see below) has occupied since 1965. As the oyster succumbed to over-harvesting and disease, tourism has turned out to be much more lucrative than seafood.

Streets once alive on weekends with watermen out on the town after a hard day’s work, are now the place to hob-nob with the rich and famous. Except for two bars, the streets pretty much close up at 6 pm. That’s not to say any of St. Michaels charm has been lost, it’s only enhanced by knowing what the town once was.

Attractions

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is a great place to learn hands-on about the industries that built St. Michaels – shipbuilding, oystering and crabbing. It has a complex of nine exhibit buildings, the world’s largest collection of traditional Bay boats, a working boatyard, and the 1879 Hooper Strait Lighthouse. Open daily, year-round; 9 am-5 pm in spring and fall, until 6 pm in summer, closing at 4 pm in winter. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days. Admission is $8.50 adults, $4 for children ages four to 17. (Mill Street, tel. 410-745-2916, www.cbmm.org)

St. Mary’s Square between Mulberry and Chestnut streets is a feature of the original street plan made by James Braddock in 1778, who named the new town St. Michaels after the Episcopal parish nearby. He died before its fruition, but the plan was re-created in 1804-06. Today you can see the Mechanics’ Bell, which was rung to mark the start and end of the workday for carpenters in nearby shipyards. St. Mary’s Square Museum offers the experience of St. Michaels in the 1800s. The building, moved here in 1964, was built as a dwelling for a waterman in 1865 of huge timbers salvaged from a gristmill. Open weekends, May-October, or by appointment. (tel. 410-745-9561 or 410-745-3984)

For a rustic, quiet change of pace, take a jaunt down to Tilghman Island, either by car, or a 24-mile round-trip bicycle trip. You can rent them at St. Michaels Marina at the end of Mulberry Street (tel. 410-745-2400, www.stmichaelsmarina.com). It’s only $4 an hour or $16 for the whole day. It might sound like a long trip, but it’s completely and utterly flat on wide, well-paved bike lanes down a narrow and rural neck of land. The neck is so narrow that at times you get glimpses of water on both sides, Harris Creek to your left, and the Chesapeake