SMITH ISLAND 1968

SMITH ISLAND VISITORS SADDENED

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1968

WILMINGTON MORNING NEWS

50 YEARS AGO

Isolated and distinctive, Smith Island in the Chesapeake, keeps it's salty character

alive out 11 miles of Crisfield.

On view from the small passenger, mail and freight vessel, “Island Star”, the scene is

the same as it was 15 years ago. The first looming sight , the three white painted

Methodist Churches rising from the villages of Ewell, Rhodes Point and Tylerton.

which sit on the only dry land on the marshy island. There are a few groves of

pine trees.

The scene ashore is unchanged, along the shore at Ewell sit a row of shed houses on

pileings where soft shell crabs are packed in ice for shipment . In the spring before the

soft crab season, the wharves are stacked with wire mesh crab traps, with bright painted

buoys attached, awaiting to be set out with in a week or two.

The hard shell crabs caught will be brought here and placed in the latticework

'shedding' floats.

At this time of spring, oystering is done with and crabbing is about to begin for the Smith Islanders, but there is no in between season loafing. The men are at work all year and by tradition do not help around the house. It is the Smith Island women that cut the grass,

paint the fence, tend the children, cooking and laundering.

This spring, after a cold harsh winter, the fig trees are looking poorly but the islanders

are comfortable all winter with oil heat and artesian wells. The fuel oil truck never leaves

the inland but takes on oil from a vessel at the docks whenever necessary.

Now for the bad news. Smith Island, a survival of early America, is well on it's way to being a worst dumping ground anywhere. Years ago the were three pick up trucks and scores of bikes, today the two mile long shell roads see more operable cars, and then, dozens upon dozens of rusting wrecks of old cars left along the road where the quit running. The big

yellow school bus has trouble navigating the road. There is one auto graveyard at Rhodes

Point, an eyesore.

Nor is this all, the marshes are covered with flotsam of paper and cans. A party of

newspaper, television and radio people, last week, were saddened by the sight and the

prospect of it getting worse.

The Army Corp of Engineers offered help with the rusty car removal and that is a

great beginning to the Smith Island people who keep neat churches, yards and home.

Abstract; Harrison H. 04/27/18