THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606210085
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: 205 lines
URBAN DWELLERS are invariably struck by the ``another world'' character of Virginia's Eastern Shore - particularly the first-timers and the occasional visitors.
Travelers in the fast lane often have little use for words like quiet, peaceful and tranquil, like unspoiled and uncrowded, like picturesque, colorful, rustic and scenic. Here these words become part of the working vocabulary.
Virginia's Eastern Shore is that dangling participle of geography between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean that is sometimes inadvertently left off maps of the state.
It is long and narrow, yet compact enough so that the only directional terminology you need to understand is seaside and bayside (east and west) and up the road and down the road, depending on just where along the principal north-south road - U.S. 13 - you happen to be.
It is flat and green as a billiard table, with dark groves of hardwoods and pines, fields of wheat, potatoes and corn, big white frame farm houses with bigger wrap-around porches, and little church-filled communities.
Its edges are serrated by small tidal rivers and meandering creeks and softened by grassy marshes, its seaside guarded by low, sandy barrier islands.
It is such a special place that, from South Hampton Roads, it costs $10 to get in and another $10 to get out again - although you may not want to leave. But for that price you get to travel twice on one of the modern world's great engineering accomplishments: the 17.6-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
For longer than you might imagine, Virginians have turned to the Eastern Shore as a haven of solitude, a refuge from life's turbulence.
During America's first revolution in 1676, which has come to be known as Bacon's Rebellion, the royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, twice sought refuge at the bayside mansion, called Arlington, of loyalist John ``Honest Jack'' Custis II, first when rebel troops under Nathaniel Bacon besieged Jamestown and later when they burned down most of the little capital town on the James River.
But the first person I know of to speak in simple eloquence of the Eastern Shore - actually, to have his words carved in stone - was another John Custis, grandson of Berkeley's protector and the fourth of that name. This John Custis was a scholar and planter and arguably as eccentric as any Virginian who ever lived, except perhaps for John Randolph of Roanoke.
John Custis IV married the stubborn and headstrong Frances Parke, and their union was about as acrimonious as ever existed. He hated Frances with a vehemence that still burned 34 years after her death. Shortly before he died in 1749 he had carved on his tombstone the following epitaph:
``Under this Marble Tombe lies ye body of the Honorable John Custis, Esqr, of the City of Williamsburg and the Eastern Shore, the place of his nativity. Aged 71 years and yet lived but Seven Years which was the space of time he kept a Batchelor's house at Arlington on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.''
The graves of these two John Custises lie in a small, brick-walled cemetery beside Old Plantation Creek near the site of the Arlington mansion. Although an archaeology study of the Arlington site was made several years ago - it is now covered over again - little is known of the old house.
The only surviving description comes from William Byrd's diary for Nov. 9, 1709, calling it ``a great house within sight of the Bay and really a pleasant plantation but not kept very nicely.'' As eminent Colonial archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume observed, Byrd ``would have been hard put to be less specific.''
I visited the site recently with a small group of cycling enthusiasts on a ``Bed, Breakfast and Biking Weekend,'' an eco-tourism program sponsored by Eastern Shore Weekends, a division of Virginia Eastern Shore Corporation, and the Nature Conservancy.
It's an ideal way to do the Eastern Shore - slower and infinitely less confining than driving in a car; faster than walking, which would be impractical.
One of the cyclists, cruising past great green tumbles of honeysuckle bursting with yellow and white blossoms, called it the ``scratch and sniff tour.'' This way you get the true flavor of the area.
This was the second of three B&B&B Weekends, directed by Mariah Mears with the assistance of Denard Spady, both Eastern Shore natives. The third, next weekend, has long been sold out, but there are plans for more in the fall.
There's no reason, though, for not doing it on your own. An organization called Citizens for a Better Eastern Shore has published a five-zone guide for bike and weekend travelers called Between the Waters. In includes things to see and do and places to eat, sleep and shop in each of the five zones.
The B&B&B Weekends include a day-long guided bike tour (about 30 miles) of the lower part of the Eastern Shore designed for total immersion into local culture with a catered lunch at Kiptopeke State Park, two nights in a B&B in the town of Cape Charles or the surrounding area and a progressive dinner in which the participants ``progress'' from one B&B to the next for each course. All of the cycling is done on lightly traveled back roads.
One of the interesting stops is the tiny waterman's village of Oyster on the seaside. Once this place was the supplier of clams for Howard Johnson restaurants nationwide. Today it is suffering in the fallout of a declining shellfish population.
You have to be very careful when you visit the Eastern Shore. Try to keep your senses about you. It's captivating. It may change your life. You may not leave. Carol and Bruce Evans didn't. Well, only long enough to pack and move.
Carol and Bruce came over from Great Bridge for a weekend a few years ago and stayed at the Sea Gate B&B, Cape Charles' first, opened by Chris Bannon in 1988. They looked around the town of Cape Charles on Saturday and were talking to a real estate agent Sunday.
They bought, too, and what they bought - a grand and spacious elderly (1912) Colonial Revival - they have restored and converted into the Cape Charles House, one of six B&Bs in this quiet town of less than 1,400 (1990 census). That may be more B&Bs per capita than any place in the United States.
A writer in a recent issue of Southern Inns and Bed and Breakfasts magazine noted that ``it's not too far-fetched to imagine that with only minimal occupancy, more people visit the town and stay in the local inns than actually live there.''
Driving through the shady streets of Cape Charles - those running east-west named for famous Virginians, the cross streets mostly for fruit trees - it is easy to understand the ``hometown'' appeal of this place, to understand why many come and growing numbers stay.
Cape Charles is rather like a time capsule. It was born in 1886, less than two years after the old New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk railroad established a terminal here to connect with bay steamers.
Railroad families came first and they were followed by Northampton County families, attracted by paved streets, electricity, telephones and a central water and sewage system. Vacationers soon came, too, and they all built large, comfortable homes.
But the railroad was always the lifeblood, and the town very nearly died in the 1950s when the railroad shut down and the car ferry terminal was moved southward to Kiptopeke.
Today Cape Charles is experiencing a revival because it remains an attractive and tranquil alternative to urban life. It's a place with uncrowded beaches, a place where kids safely skateboard in the streets, where people watch the sun set in the bay from rockers on porches and where they walk their dogs in the late evening and speak to each other. And the real estate prices remain remarkably low compared to South Hampton Roads.
It has a superb collection of houses from the 1885-1940 period, and the local historical society has published a walking tour brochure that covers many of the town's significant structures.
From the brochure I learned about Thomas Dixon Jr. The house where he and his family lived from 1894 to '96, called Honeysuckle Lodge, is next door to the Cape Charles House in Tazewell Street.
Chances are you've never heard of Thomas Dixon Jr. I hadn't.
In his day, five million people heard him lecture. Millions more bought his books, countless millions more saw the product of his creative talent when they paid an unheard-of $2 a ticket to see D.W. Griffith's 1915 movie ``Birth of a Nation,'' based on Dixon's 1905 book ``The Clansman.''
Dixon was called a genius of unparalleled brilliance and a racist whose works should have died before birth. He made two fortunes in his lifetime, yet died almost penniless.
He came to Cape Charles when he was famous merely as a New York minister. He moved his family here to escape the unhealthy conditions of the city. He continued to commute to his pulpit every week, leaving Cape Charles on the Friday night train and returning Sunday night.
His congregation finally put a stop to this commute and to his moments of solitude on Virginia's Eastern Shore. MEMO: THE TWO ARLINGTONS
IF YOU THOUGHT Arlington is the old Lee mansion, across the Potomac
from Washington where the national cemetery is, you are right. Here's
the connection between that and the Eastern Shore Arlington.
John Custis II, son of the immigrant, built the original Arlington
house on the Eastern Shore in the 1670s and named the plantation for
Henry Bennet, first earl of Arlington and lord chamberlain, who had been
instrumental in getting John Sr. and John II ``naturalized'' - made
Englishmen again - after they had spent many years in Holland.
John Custis IV later inherited Arlington.
John IV had a son called Daniel Parke Custis. This son married Martha
Dandridge, and they had two children, John Parke ``Jackie'' Custis and
Patsy Custis. When Daniel Parke Custis died, his widow Martha married
George Washington.
Jackie Custis, serving as an aide to his stepfather, died of camp
fever during the siege of Yorktown in 1781, leaving four children. One
of these was George Washington Parke Custis. This grandson of Martha
Washington and adopted son of George Washington built the Arlington
mansion above the Potomac.
His daughter, Mary Custis, married Robert E. Lee, and G.W.P. Custis
became a ``second father'' to the future Confederate General. Mrs. Lee
inherited the Arlington plantation on the Potomac when G.W.P. Custis
died in 1857.
During the Civil War, this Arlington was confiscated by the Federal
government, which established the now-famous cemetery there.
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
Virginia's Eastern Shore is the 70-mile-long southernmost portion of
the Delmarva Peninsula, named for the three states that share it -
Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. It separates the Chesapeake Bay from
the Atlantic Ocean. Its shape on a map has been likened to a witch's
hand extending south from Pennsylvania, pointing one bony finger toward
Norfolk.
Getting there: From South Hampton Roads, take U.S. 13 north across
the 17.6-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel ($10 toll each way).
Contacts:
For general information: Virginia's Eastern Shore Tourism Commission,
P.O. Box R, Melfa, Va. 23410; (804) 787-2460. It publishes a free
comprehensive pocket guide to recreation, accommodations, dining,
stores, shops and services.
For B&B&B information: Eastern Shore Weekends, P.O. Box 395, Belle
Haven, Va. 23306; (804) 442-9412.
For a do-it-yourself cycling and weekend Between the Waters guide:
Citizens for a Better Eastern Shore, P.O. Box 882, Eastville, Va. 23347;
(804) 678-7157. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Cyclists at Oyster view Mockhorn Bay between the Eastern Shore of
Virginia and the barrier islands off the seaside.
Among the sights: the Custis graves, left, and the Sea Gate Bed and
Breakfast
Photos by STEPHEN HARRIMAN
A curious sight at Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore is this water
tower disguised as a lighthouse.
The Eastern Shore's edges are serrated by small tidal rivers and
meandering creeks and softened by grassy marshes.
Color map by CNB