The protected waters of Town Creek have been a center of maritime trade and commerce for centuries. To your left is Oxford Boatyard, now owned by Safe Harbor Marinas, whose roots here go back to at least the mid-18th century. A site of continuous boat maintenance and construction, its skilled workers carried out important contracts for the US Navy during World War II, constructing 126 vessels and repairing 71 others. Today, it is a leading yacht marina.
All along the near docks to your left are the workboats of Oxford’s current commercial watermen. Here on the Eastern Shore, we call these folks “watermen” not “fishermen” because they are generally not hunting for fish. They are the motorized successors to generations of watermen who sailed fleets of specialized local boats called bugeyes, sailing canoes and skipjacks out in search of oysters and, in later years, famous Chesapeake blue crabs. With the exception of Sundays, these men still head out before dawn, returning to offload their catch in the early afternoon.
The large building to your right was the Oxford Packing Company, and is one of the last surviving packing houses in Oxford. It is hard today to imagine Oxford at the end of the 19th century, when more than a dozen packing houses along Town Creek and the Tred Avon River were in full operation, and thousands of watermen worked the Tred Avon or Choptank Rivers. The industrial operations along the docks employed hundreds of men and women, both Black and White, in sorting the hauls, shucking the oysters, and packing them all in cans or ice. Their product was shipped by steamship and steam train to the markets in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York and from there to Europe and the far West. Driven by this boom, Oxford’s population grew 500% between 1870 and 1900. In 1900, there you could have climbed mountains of oyster shells where you see the parking lot today.
Today, the building is the home of Capsize Restaurant and The Scottish Highland Creamery. Either would be an excellent spot to pause for a little refreshment before you head back up Tilghman Street to Cutts and Case Shipyard. (Stop #18).
