Oxford Map and History

Oxford is one of the oldest towns in Maryland. Although already settled for perhaps 20 years, Oxford marks the year 1683 The Strand Tilghman as its official founding, for in that year Oxford was first named by the Maryland General Assembly as a seaport and was laid out as a town. In 1694, Oxford and a new town called Anne Arundel (now Annapolis) were selected the only ports of entry for the entire Maryland province. Until the American Revolution, Oxford enjoyed prominence as an international shipping center surrounded by wealthy tobacco plantations. Today, Oxford is a charming tree-lined and waterbound village with a population of just over 700 and is still important in boat building and yachting. It has a protected harbor for watermen who harvest oysters, crabs, clams and fish, and for sailors from all over the Bay.

For a walking tour and more history visit https://tidewatertimes. com/travel-tourism/oxford-maryland/.

St. Market St. High St. East

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Benoni Ave. Pleasant St. Robes Hbr. Ct. South Morris Street Bachelor Point Road Pier St. E. Pier St. Oxford Road

W. Division St. Caroline St.West St. Tred Avon Ave. First Street Jack’s Pt. Rd. Third Street Bonfield Ave. 2nd St.

Ave. Myrtle

Stewart Ave. Norton St. Mill St. Wilson St. Banks St.Factory St.Morris St. Oxford Park South Street Jefferson St. Sinclair St. Richardson St. Town Creek Rd.

Oxford Community Center

Oxford Bellevue Ferry

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bor. The life-size depiction of the late author sitting on the seawall was inundated up to the neck in Isabel’s storm surge. Even more visually discomfiting were accompanying statues of youngsters posed at his feet, attentively listening to his reading of Roots, the beloved saga of Kunta Kinte.

The City Dock Action Committee spearheads the Ego Alley proposal as a comprehensive solution to replace lesser, unexecuted plans from recent decades. Despite the new plan’s scope and price tag, the Union of Concerned Scientists doesn’t consider Annapolis at risk of “chronic inundation.” Less than 10 percent of the city’s usable area floods; its flooding just occurs at an inconvenient location ~ especially so when it coincides with the Annapolis Boat Shows, which aim to attract up to 100,000 visitors each year. As Eileen Fogarty, co-chair of the City Dock committee, has said, “There’s a sense of urgency. The flooding is up to fiftytwo days a year. . . . a situation that can’t be ignored or kicked down the road.”

The plan averts its gaze from what will become of saltwater diverted from overtopping Ego Alley’s seawall or blocked by backflow valves from surging up through storm drains. Also excluded is flooding on adjacent grounds

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of the Naval Academy, presupposed ideally to be coordinated with federal authorities.

The feds also have an Army Corps of Engineers plan to relieve Smith Island. In 2012, Maryland offered to buy Smith Islanders out of their homes, but nearly all residents refused, putting their trust in erosion-blocking breakwaters. Thus, the Corps planned hundreds of feet of jetty and breakwater to improve navigation and reestablish some buffering wetlands lost to erosion. It is widely recognized that the value of Maryland’s last inhabited offshore island exceeds assets appearing on a spreadsheet.

The alternative cost of inaction is often illustrated by a pre-2010 photo of the last house that stood on nearby Holland Island, the Bay lapping around its foundation on a “dish cam” day. The forsaken island was once the “Paradise of the Chesapeake,” ridges of high land rising above the water, topped with fine Victorian-era homes. Secure harbors sheltered islanders’ oyster fleet of pungies, bugeyes, skipjacks and schooners, numbering 87 sailcraft, plus innumerable smaller boats for hand-tonging, crabbing, fishing and gunning.

Holland Island was notable because, before 1900, its rich soil, prime oyster reefs and wildfowl provided for 300 hard-working residents, with a generous excess leftover to be marketed. Within

a few short decades, long before internal combustion engines or aerosol cans were in use, Holland Island was depopulated. Presumably, even then the land was sinking and the globe warming, but islanders only recognized stormdriven erosion consuming their land. Had the term “climate refugees” been coined then, Holland Islanders would have bristled if it were applied to them. In fact, erosion had forced some of the same families to retreat to Holland Island when life on Spring and Long islands became untenable.

Long Island protected Holland from storm-driven waves building from the west across the widest reach of Chesapeake Bay. No trace

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of Long Island remains, nor does the high Western Ridge of Holland Island it once protected. Within twenty years, a former resident of the ridge could barely trace his old life. Captain George Todd ran a reporter there in his workboat from Crisfield in 1937. Transferring to a rowboat, Captain Todd stood on the middle seat, poling through shallow saltwater. His house had stood on the lower end of the Western Ridge, among something of a subdivision of homes overlooking the Chesapeake.

The Captain pointed his pole into four feet of clear Bay water, saying, “See that big stone? That was our back doorstep. . . . I thought maybe I could show you one of the gravestones, but I guess they’re all about gone. Crabbers see them and if they want a white stone, they take ’em up and carry ’em away.”

Other large stones could be seen lined along underwater. The Captain said, “They boated those stones down here from the Susquehanna long before my day . . . piled ’em along the Western Ridge where the tide was washing worst. I helped Pappa move ’em from where they were. We moved ’em here after part of the ridge had washed away. Yes, sir, they’re just where we put ’em. All along here where there’s just water, there was a high ridge sloping down to the west and a sandy beach. . . .

“In these days when the govern-

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ment’s got all this money to spend, we might’ve gotten a breakwater. That might’ve stopped it, but we couldn’t with what we had.” During Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, much infrastructure was indeed funded. It was too late for Holland Island, of course, but in any case, Maryland and its counties generally only protect their own government property and infrastructure. Holland Island only had one lane, cleared by islanders themselves, Dorchester County contributing about a hundred dollars. This “road” followed the ridge landward of the houses.

The Captain continued, “There was a graveyard out here, before the island began to wash away. Then we moved most of ’em to the center of the island.” He poled up to a hummock of grass rising out of the water nearer shore. “This is all that’s left of this end,” he said, climbing overboard. “I think I’ll get out and stand on this. It’ll probably be the last time I will.”

After going ashore and touring the remains of the island, the Captain’s passenger reported that

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a few houses still stood, staring with “sashless windows and yawning doors” across the Chesapeake. These orphaned structures were scavenged for building materials, and eventually crumbled to storms and erosion. Nearly twenty years earlier, by 1918, most islanders had dismantled their houses and barged them to the mainland for reassembly. Many island houses stand today, on Tilghman Island and Bishops Head, in Cambridge and Crisfield, some rebuilt on higher foundations than neighboring homes. A few are still occupied by island descendants.

[Holland Island: Lost Atlantis of the Chesapeake is a more complete story available at dogwdbooks@ shorenet.net or www.HollandIslandBook.com/]

Forty-some years ago, A.M. Foley swapped the Washington, D.C., business scene for a writing life on Elliott Island, Maryland. Tidewater Times has kindly published portions of one upcoming work, Chesapeake Bay Island Hopping, along with other regional musings. Foley’s published works are described at www.HollandIslandBook.com.