Center for Environment & Society

Contact: Robert Forloney, Director of Education

Location: 213 N. Talbot Street, St. Michaels, MD 21663

Driving Time: About 1 hour.

Directions from WC

Go south on 213 until it meets Rt 50 East. Stay on 50 for about 11 miles, then make a right onto 322/ Easton Pkwy. Go 2 miles, and make a right onto St. Michael's Rd/ 33. Continue for 9.5 miles and arrive at the Museum.

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

http://www.cbmm.org/

A Brief History of Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is dedicated to furthering an interest in, understanding of, and appreciation for the culture and maritime heritage of the Chesapeake Bay and its environs. The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum was founded in 1965 on Navy Point in St. Michaels, a Talbot County riverfront village on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

The Museum's first exhibits were displayed in the Dodson House on what was then a two-acre campus. Today's eighteen-acre waterfront campus includes Navy Point, which was once the site of a busy complex of seafood packing houses, docks, and workboats. On permanent display at the campus is the nation's most complete collection of Chesapeake Bay artifacts, visual arts, and indigenous water craft. Interpretive exhibitions and public programs cover the range of Chesapeake Bay maritime history and culture-including Native-American life, Anglo-American settlement, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic trade, naval history, the Bay's unique watercraft and boat building traditions, navigation, waterfowling, boating, seafood harvesting, and recreation.

Sites of Interest

A fleet of historic and restored ships, the world's largest collection of traditional Bay boats (85 vessels, including the 5 boats of the floating fleet). Also a working boatyard dedicated to the restoration and building of traditional Bay boats.
The nation's most complete collection of Chesapeake Bay artifacts, visual arts, and indigenous watercraft. Interpretive exhibitions and public programs covering the range of Chesapeake Bay maritime history and culture, including Native-American life, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic trade, naval history, the Bay's unique watercraft and boat building traditions, navigation, waterfowling, boating, seafood harvesting, and recreation.
The Chesapeake People program, which features skipjack captains and crew members, boat builders, hunters and decoy carvers, dipnet makers, crab pickers and oyster shuckers, demonstrating their craft and preserving historic traditions.
A library focused on maritime and naval history, Maryland and Virginia state and local history, exploration and sea travel, regional maritime fiction, waterfowl hunting, marine engineering, navigation and seamanship, boat and ship design and construction, and yachting and recreational boating, as well as a large collection of manuscripts, recorded oral histories, and historic photographs. Open for research by appointment.
A number of historic buildings, including houses, one of the few remaining cottage-style lighthouses on the bay, and a 1933 cannery warehouse built on pilings along the waterfront.
A variety of student tours and trips can be arranged.
Offers apprenticeships, including boat-building and apprentice-for-a-day sessions to learn traditional wooden boat-building skills.
Also offers a number of sailing courses and opportunities for sailing trips for groups and individuals.

Cost: TBA

Hours: Open daily, year-round.

Spring: March 1 to May 31, 10 am-5 pm
Summer: June 1 to September 30, 10 am-6 pm
Fall: October 1 to November 13, 10 am-5 pm
Winter: November 14 to February 28, 10 am-4 pm

Possibilities for Art Classes

A scenic view of historic St. Michaels and the Miles River
Views of a historic waterfront, including a shipyard and a number of historic vessels
An exhibit dedicated to the art of working and decorative decoys
Maritime paintings by some of the world's leading artists and a large collection of historic photography, including 421 paintings and prints by significant regional artists such as Louis Feuchter, H. Bolton Jones, and Otto Muhlenfeld

Possibilities for Business Classes

An opportunity to view the history of the Chesapeake Bay, the seafood industry, and working waterfronts, and the effects on Maryland economy, so long dependent on the waterfront

Possibilities for Creative Writing Classes

Beautiful and inspiring views for travel writing and descriptive writing exercises
A library including a collection of regional maritime fiction and a large collection of recorded oral histories

Possibilities for History/Anthropology Classes

A library dedicated to maritime and regional history
A number of educational programs related to Bay history
A variety of exhibits including 7,500 objects documenting the interaction of people and the tidewater Chesapeake Bay region over a 200-year period
A historic working waterfront, including a working boat yard, and exhibits demonstrating the many aspects of the seafood industry including a traditional wharf
Five historic buildings including the c. 1890 Eagle House, once the home of a steamboat captain; three other historic houses (all contributing structures to a National Register District), and a 1933 cannery warehouse built on pilings along the waterfront, which was constructed from pieces of an earlier steamboat/railroad terminal. Other structures include the 1888 Point Lookout fog bell tower and the 1879 Hooper Strait lighthouse, one of only three surviving Chesapeake Bay cottage-style lighthouses

300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, Maryland 21620 | 410-778-2800 | 800-422-1782