Sunrise over the Choptank River at Cambridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
The Choptank River is 73 miles long and the largest on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It is bordered by Talbot County on the north and Dorchester County on the south, and it wanders through Caroline County, past its county seat of Denton, to its source in Delaware. Captain John Smith explored it in 1608 and Harriett Tubman traversed its watershed 250 years later. It is the “Heart of Chesapeake Country” bolstered by the “Queen City of Cambridge.” This river has a lot of stories to tell.
In the early days of the colonial settlement, British merchant ships entered the Choptank on the way to Maryland’s second busiest harbor, Oxford. Situated at the mouth of the Tred Avon River, as it enters the Choptank, Oxford was declared, with Annapolis, one of two ports of entry in 1683. It was here that Robert Morris, Sr., would build his inn and home in 1710, and serve as the agent for Liverpool, England. As a port of entry, Oxford received goods from England and exported hogsheads of tobacco from the rich farmland and wealthy plantations of Talbot County.
Robert Morris, Jr., financier of the American Revolution, grew up in the inn his father built. Designated a historic inn, it remains today as the oldest full-service inn in America. Post-Revolution, the Grand English Merchant ships were replaced by oyster tongers. Oxford today—population 600—is a quiet village. It is a recognized Historic District with six sites on the National Register of Historic Places. And the nation’s oldest privately-operated ferry, founded in 1683, still carries people, goods, and cars 3/4 of a mile across the Tred Avon from Oxford to Bellevue and back.
Fifty miles upriver, Cabin Creek off the Choptank houses a popular gathering place for locals—the Suicide Bridge restaurant, which sits adjacent to the crossing. The first wooden bridge across Cabin Creek was built in 1888. Only 21 feet high, it has long been the place for depressed guys to call it a day. The first was a postmaster from Hurlock who shot himself and fell into the water. A distraught farmer did the same. A man nicknamed “Frog” jumped off the bridge and hit his head. Some said his wasn’t suicide, but foul play. His autopsy was performed right there on a picnic table. So…when the popular restaurant featuring Maryland seafood was built, it took its name from what natives called “Suicide Bridge.”
Looking out toward the water from the restaurant today, one might view the Choptank River Queen, an 80-foot replica of a 1900s-era stern-wheeler boat. It and Dorothy and Megan, named by Dave Nickerson for his wife and daughter, were the first built for the Choptank Riverboat Company. It operates out of Suicide Bridge on sightseeing and dinner cruises, featuring the Eastern Shore’s famed fried chicken, crabcakes, tomatoes, and corn.
A century ago, steamboats frequented the Choptank with excursions to and from D.C. and Baltimore. City folk came to the Shore to spend summers away from the heat and enjoy good, old Eastern Shore fare. Tilghman Island and Taylor’s Island were popular waterside retreats. Vacation cruises through historic waters were also popular. The Choptank Steamboat Company (not affiliated with today’s Choptank Riverboat Company) offered a 37-hour excursion on the side-wheeler Dorchester to D.C. for $7, with $1 meals available, featuring corn bread, deviled crab, and fried chicken. By 1939, the industry succumbed to the automobile. The Dorchester was auctioned off, renamed the Robert E. Lee, and served as a short excursion river boat in D.C. It was dismantled in 1953.
Recently, on September 25, 2021, the City of Cambridge celebrated the life of another vessel—the 25th anniversary of the skipjack Nathan of Dorchester. The festivities included sailing races featuring the few skipjacks—Maryland’s State Boat—still on the water. There were once more than 2,000 skipjacks and bugeyes plying the Choptank and its tributaries, when oyster harvesting was king for the Shore’s watermen. Today, they are ghosts rotting along shoreline swamps; only 26 known remain.
Nathan was launched in 1997 to honor the heritage of the Eastern Shore and, specifically, Dorchester County in a landscape with 1,700 miles of shoreline from which grew a traditional way of life unique to the Chesapeake Bay. Skipjacks would ply shallow waters and return bounty to rugged watermen in the howling winter months between November and March. Boat builders designed these vessels in their yards with an innate sense of how the pine trees selected for the build fit together. Nathan was the last skipjack ever built.
Today, the Richardson Marine Museum in Cambridge supports the nonprofit Ruark Boatworks, which keeps alive the art of boat building and restoring of vintage wooden boats. The Nathan is named for a peddler that arrived in Cambridge in 1873 and founded a furniture store that produced a fortune. The building of Nathan by volunteers employed traditional methods based on a design of a boat built by Ruark’s great grandfather.
The Nathan isn’t the only Cambridge effort to keep Eastern Shore heritage alive. In August 2021, the fifth annual Light Night Party was held to benefit the Cambridge Lighthouse Foundation, which oversees a replica of the screw pile lighthouse that once marked the mouth of the Choptank River until decommissioned in 1964. The original house and all within, including its keeper aboard, was moved from Cherrystone Bar, Cape Charles, by barge 70 miles up the Bay to its final resting place along the Choptank in 1921. The replica of this “Jewel of the Chesapeake” and the Nathan of Dorchester can be viewed by visitors at Cambridge’s Long Wharf on the Choptank, located off High Street.
This Chesapeake Bay history, the folklore of our State’s traditional way of life and the effort to keep our rich water heritage alive, may not have happened but for a program promoted by President George H.W. Bush in 1988 called “Thousand Points of Light.” The Nation’s economy was failing at the time; small towns were faltering. Recognizing the need to engage citizens in their communities, the President called upon all to work together in finding new ways to stimulate their economies. Cambridge rose up and appointed a committee of 100 leaders, chaired by Harold Ruark, to envision ideas to promote Cambridge. In the interest of preserving the maritime heritage of Cambridge and Dorchester County, four projects emerged. They were: to establish the Richardson Maritime Museum; build a replica of the Choptank Lighthouse at Long Wharf Park; build a Visitors Center at Sailwinds Park; and create a skipjack dedicated to education and community building. All are in place today earning Cambridge and the Choptank River the title “Heart of the Chesapeake Country.”
But times are changing once again. As 1,700 miles of shoreline erode, due to sea level rise along the Choptank watershed, silt smothers the grass nurseries for fish and the oyster beds. The “Great Choptank Island,” Tilghman Island, which was granted in 1659 and settled by the Tilghman Family who farmed it with slave labor for 175 years, is losing 10 feet of shoreline a year. Small barrier islands, like James and Sharps, once connected with Tilghman. Sharps Island at the mouth of the Choptank foretells the future for life in the heartland of the Bay. In the 1800s, Sharps was a 600-acre island. It was good farmland and boasted a popular resort built by a Baltimore investor. By 1914, the island had shrunk to 100 acres. During WWII, the Army used it for a rifle range. Today, the island is among those that have disappeared.
Yet the Choptank River remains a popular heritage, recreational, and fishing site…and will go on. It’s flora and fauna may change. Thankfully, there are ongoing efforts to restore oyster reefs, water quality, and shoreline throughout this watershed. And the story of its heritage will carry on, thanks to the volunteers and patrons living in the cities and towns that have dotted the Choptank riverfront for centuries.
