THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 3, 1994 TAG: 9408030394
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: AROUND THE BAY IN 50 DAYS
Earl Swift is exploring the geography, history and people of the
Chesapeake Bay on a 50-day kayak trip that began July 1.
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
North of the Patuxent River, the low-lying marsh and sandy beach that dominate the Chesapeake Bay shoreline give way to towering walls of orange and gray.
The cliffs of Calvert County run for 20 miles down the Bay's west coast, rising to heights of well over 100 feet. They're studded with fossils, some of which have washed from the cliffs and now lie on narrow beaches at their feet. When I beached the kayak along the cliffs one morning over the weekend, I found two fossilized sharks' teeth in the sand beside the boat.
Most remarkable about these cliffs, though, is that they were once inland hills miles from the water and today stand as reminders of how much the Bay has broadened since its early days as little more than a narrow river.
The estuary constantly changes, and everything along its shores, whether created by man or force of nature, is in a state of evolution. Just in the last century, the Chesapeake's waters have chipped at the shoreline until points have become islands, islands have disappeared completely, and houses and towns built hundreds of yards from the bayfront have been inundated.
Old maps depicting fat fingers of land that we know today to be slimmer aren't the product of inexact cartography alone; the land they describe has been transformed.
Holland Island off Maryland's eastern shore was a thriving watermen's community at the century's turn. Today it's a sliver of its former size and nothing remains of man's presence there. Barren Island was populated, too, until encroaching water prompted its residents to float the entire settlement - houses, stores and churches - to Hooper Island, a few miles to the east.
And here on the western shore, relics of the Bay as it was are abundant. The Cedar Island lighthouse was built on land at the Patuxent's mouth late in the 19th century. Today it's 200 yards offshore, in ruins. North of the river, water has marched to within a few feet of the Cove Point light, the oldest brick lighthouse on the Bay. When it was built well inland in the 1820s, such a threat was unthinkable.
I'd seen the Calvert Cliffs before I reached them Saturday: They front one of the Middle Bay's narrow stretches, and I'd seen them from Hooper Island in mid-July. I paddled past cliff after cliff in the company of herons and bald eagles, past slides where slabs of rock had calved from the walls.
On Sunday morning, I paddled past the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Station, Maryland's first atomic plant. Its warm-water discharge has made the surrounding Bay a favorite gathering spot for fish. I paddled by two groups of stingrays playing in the water and past a gang of rockfish breaking the surface.
The nuclear plant was protected by a seawall, which was braced by a string of huge piles. Even so, I wondered how long it would take the Bay to hack its way past these defenses as it has for everything else placed in its path.
After a much-needed motel stay at Solomons, a yachting headquarters where even the Holiday Inn has a marina out back, I paddled across the Patuxent under jet fighters doing touch-and-goes at the Patuxent Naval Air Test Center and turned south.
On Tuesday morning, I paddled down to Point Lookout and the 6-mile-wide mouth of the Potomac River.
Even by the Chesapeake's standards, the point has undergone dramatic changes in the past 150 years. As a popular resort in the mid-19th century, it boasted 100 cottages and a hotel. During the Civil War, the federals leased the hotel, converting it to a hospital, and a POW camp for captured Confederate troops was built on the grounds.
Camp Hoffman, as it was called, eventually became the largest such camp in the war, with 52,000 prisoners - thousands of whom froze to death or died of disease. This northern Andersonville never achieved the infamy of its southern counterpart, however, and today the only vestige of the camp is an ivy-cloaked earthen fort where Union troops stood guard over the prisoners. A state park surrounds the site. Picnic tables and campsites have replaced the stockade. The hospital, were it still standing, would be underwater, 100 yards out in the Bay. MEMO: Swift's next report will appear Sunday. His 50-day journey around the
Chesapeake Bay began July 1.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
EARL SWIFT
The cliffs of Calvert County run for 20 miles down the Bay's west
coast, rising to heights of well over 100 feet. They're studded with
fossils, some of which have washed from the cliffs and now lay on
beaches at their feet.
Map
STAFF
by CNB