talk of the bay
Clam House Revival
Rock Hall’s venerable clam house takes on a new mission.
O
n the outside, the Rock Hall Clam House on Rock Hall Harbor sports a spiffy new mural where watermen once backed workboats into its slips to unload their catch. Inside, the cinder block building has been scrubbed of the messy processing that once took place here. With a carpeted conference room, a class/display room and workshops, it now smells vaguely of wood shavings and salt-soaked lapboards with hardly a whiff of the mud and marine harvest that once permeated the place. The clam house, threatened with destruction by a proposed waterfront hotel, was preserved thanks to a community effort initiated by Waterman’s Association president, the late Larry Simns. “He was instrumental in getting the Maryland Seafood Authority involved, when the building was up for sale in the late 1980s,” says Robin Wood Kurowski, Rock Hall native and board member of the nonprofit Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area. “Larry was concerned that the building remain something of what it once was, possibly a museum.” For 300 years Rock Hall was a close-knit waterman’s community. But in the past 30 years it has undergone a development boom. What was once a usual sight—crab traps in backyards, nets drying in the sun, bateaus moored throughout the harbor—is now the stuff of museums.
Rock Hall Marine Restoration & Heritage Center 21083 Chesapeake Avenue Rock Hall, Md. 410-725-0443
22 Chesapeake Bay Magazine May 2016
“We’re the last generation who did this,” says Rock Haller William “Scratch” Ashley. “We wanted to educate people, especially the kids, about the boats that had been built here, and the people who worked so hard for so many years.” From the almostashes of the clam house, the Rock Hall Marine Restoration and Heritage Center is rising to do that. The center, which displays beautiful models of traditional workboats, also teaches some of the hands-on skills that former generations relied on. A pegboard hung with scrapers, hand saws, chisels and planes displays the old tools volunteers will use to teach school children how to restore old boats, including the center’s 15 ½-foot
Top: A mural by local artist Ken Castelli decorates the recently remodeled Rock Hall Marine Restoration and Heritage Center. A bove : Center volunteer “Scratch” Wilson shows Trent Vansant, boatbuilder Stanley Vansant’s great-grandson, how to caulk.
ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com