Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [116]
TIP: Tune your car radio in to 1700 AM for visitor information, directions and events for the Harriet Tubman birthplace, the Underground Railroad driving tour, the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and the Spocott Windmill.
Other Communities
In Hurlock, the Dorothy-Megan paddlewheel riverboat is berthed at the Suicide Bridge Restaurant for sightseeing and dinner cruises (tel. 410-943-4775). Hooperville is a fishing village where you can go watch watermen bringing in their catch, or tour a seafood-processing plant (Mid-Atlantic Receptives, tel. 800-769-5912). Old Salty’s is a good, home-style restaurant there (tel. 410-377-3752).
Information
Dorchester County Office of Tourism, tel. 800-522-TOUR, www.tourdorchester.org.
Crisfield
Around Town
Crisfield is an unpretentious port town with a clear sense of identity. Here, it’s all about seafood – the catching, packaging and consumption of it. Several seafood restaurants have views onto Somers Cove or the Chesapeake Bay. In season, charter fishing and sightseeing boats stay busy entering and leaving the harbor. A long fishing pier attracts anglers of all ages, while a museum and a handful of shops have nautical themes. And most refreshing, a good bit of the town’s waterfront is still occupied by the industry that built it – seafood processing, aka “crab-picking” and “oyster-shucking.” You can even take a tour of active seafood houses through the local museum.
Crisfield is a growing favorite among boaters and sportsmen. Somers Cove Marina (tel. 410-968-0925, www.somerscove.com) wins high marks with transient boaters for facilities and friendliness. There’s a pool, laundry and shower facilities, a motel, tennis courts, a playground, as well as the local museum and visitor center on site. The 100 transient slips, are within walking distance (very important for those who arrive by boat!), marine supplies, a grocery, and half a dozen restaurants.
Perched on the second floor deck of one of these restaurants, Sidestreet Seafood Market, we watched the Capt. Steven Thomas boarding passengers bound for a day trip to Tangier Island. We ate a lunch of Maryland crab chowder (distinctly different from Virginia’s version), a bucket of steamed clams and sweet tea. From our picnic table we had a bird’s eye view of typical Crisfield scenery: families walking to the fishing pier with poles, buckets and coolers, shoppers going in and out of the bank and grocery, a few hot rodders cruising down Main Street to where it dead-ends at the pier, then turning to cruise slowly back past us. Across the street, over the roofs of Main Street buildings, the roof tops of the busy seafood processing houses were visible.
Crisfield became a major seafood exporter back in 1867 with the construction of the Eastern Shore Railroad. The largest one-day shipment of oysters from Crisfield was on December 19, 1920, when the railroad shipped 18 boxcars, or about 80,000 bushels. To say the town was built upon the seafood industry is quite literal: Part of the town actually sits atop huge deposits of discarded oyster shells.
The oyster industry may have declined from its heyday, but the blue crab is still a mainstay for Chesapeake Bay watermen. One indication of just how important the little crustacean is to Crisfield is the street signs: They all bear the silhouette of a crab. Come to think of it, the signs on the restaurant’s restrooms said: “Jimmys” and “Sooks,” the crab complement to “men” and “women.”
Attractions
The J. Millard Tawes Historical Museum has hosted such unique displays as “Woolies,” a collection of pictures made out of scraps of clothing and sails that 19th-century sailors sent home as handmade postcards. The museum also offers guided walking tours with access to seafood-packing houses. Tours meet in front of the museum at 10 am, Monday-Saturday. The cost is just $2.50, a dollar