As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.
Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water.
Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data.
Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects.
A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline.
Grand hotels, dedicated railway lines, wide boardwalks, and a stream of big city tourists. For most of us, stories of the Bay's beach resorts have slipped into the past, a lost part of the region's history. Bay writer Lara Lutz has rescued those stories in a new book, Chesapeake's Western Shore: Vintage Vacationland. A pictorial tour, the book is part of the Images of America series produced by Arcadia Publishing.
In her introduction, Lutz traces the region's development from Bayside farming and fishing communities to inland cities built by the industrial age. Eventually those city dwellers, sweltering in summer heat, looked back toward the Bay for relief and for a quick get-away. She writes that some of these vacation spots were modest enclaves along quiet coves but that others sported large entertainment venues that drew thousands.
She also describes restrictions that banned minority races and religions, and how those minorities found their own places to enjoy Bayside fishing, picnicking, and swimming — places like Highland Beach near Annapolis and the Captain Salem Avery house in Shady Side.
Chesapeake's Western Shore gives an inside look at private resort communities that sprang up on rivers like the Magothy and the Severn, and at commercial beaches like Bay Ridge that looked straight out on the Bay. Those more accustomed to Ocean City and the Atlantic beaches will find an interesting portrait of shores on a smaller scale and intriguing pictures of the past.
Chesapeake's Western Shore: Vintage Vacationland by Lara Lutz, Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC, 2009, 128 pp, is available at bookstores and on the web.
As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.
Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water.
Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data.
Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects.
A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline.
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