In a new book, Wye Island, published for RFF in spring 1977 by Johns Hopkins University Press, Boyd Gibbons writes a human story of conflict over the development of a tranquil island on Maryland's Eastern Shore. In the center of the controversy is James Rouse, creator of newtown Columbia, who hopes his environmentally sensitive plan for Wye Island can stop haphazard sprawl on his native shore—a situation that has become increasingly serious since the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Arrayed against Rouse are the gentry on their grand estates, the natives, and some relative newcomers.
Gibbons, who was formerly a senior research associate at RFF, presents all sides of the conflict from the perspective of the participants themselves. The result, according to Russell Train, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is ". . . a fresh and fascinating approach to land use issues. . . . It is an excellent book—thoughtful, entertaining, and above all, one which is sensitive to the human values that may well determine how we use or abuse our land."
William Whyte, author of The Organization Man, The Last Landscape, and other books, calls it "first-rate social history, with a fascinating locale and cast of characters. It's a fine study of a classic land use encounter. The lessons can be applied to every growing metropolitan area."
It is hoped that the following few excerpts from the book reveal something of its flavor.
With little difficulty you can find people on the Eastern Shore who will tell you, without a trace of humor in their voices, that they would gladly blow up the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, if that would return the Shore to its former tranquility. A visitor might well conclude that the Shore seems rather tranquil now; and, compared with nearby Washington and Baltimore, it surely is. But to the people who grew up on the Eastern Shore or moved there years ago, the present bears little resemblance to the unhurried days of the ferries.
The Eastern Shore was never entirely isolated, for steamboats had moved people back and forth across the bay since the nineteenth century. However, few of the people who climbed aboard the steamers at Baltimore's Light Street piers planned to stay on the Shore. Most were going to the beaches at Ocean City, Maryland, and Rehoboth, Delaware. The Eastern Shore was not a place to get to, but to get across.
By the 1920s the ferries began replacing the steamers and, in addition to carrying passengers, hauled over their automobiles. The ferries meant some highway congestion—in 1949 700,000 cars rolled off the ferry at Matapeake on Kent Island—but the people living on the Eastern Shore did not yet feel invaded. That was all changed when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened on July 31, 1952.
That weekend people jammed the bridge, parking their cars to get out for a view. The snarl of stalled vehicles reached seven miles across Kent Island —an ominous precursor of the Gargantuan traffic tie-ups soon to engulf Kent Island and the Western Shore during the summer weekend rush to the Atlantic beaches. Through its three and a quarter centuries of settlement— the tobacco era, the oystering era, the steamboat era—the Eastern Shore had remained relatively unchanged. Now, literally overnight, the Eastern Shore was suddenly thrown open to the automobile and the millions from nearby Washington and Baltimore, many of whom longed for a country place or a summer cottage. And running before them came the subdividers.
"We don't need a town down on Wye Island." It was Edgar Bryan talking. He sat on the screened porch of his farmhouse just two miles up the Wye River from his brother's. In Washington, D.C., an hour and a half drive to the west, it was the hottest May 17 since the nineteenth century. For such a suffocating day outside, the Bryan's porch was surprisingly comfortable. Mrs. Bryan brought in tumblers of iced tea on a tray with a plate of cookies and passed them around.
"It's just time to develop that island," she said as she set the tray on a table.
"I'm against it," her husband replied. "You're the only one who's for it." He paused. "No, I guess there is the fellow who owns that hardware store in Centreville. He's for it, too," said Edgar Bryan, smiling at his wife. Edgar Bryan is eighty-six years old. (When Edgar was about three months old, his parents had him christened on an undertaker's cooling board. His father had lived on Wye Island before there was even a drawbridge or rope ferry. The Pacas had a private bridge at the east end of the island, but they wouldn't let anyone else use it, so Bryan's father would throw a saddle in a skiff and row across the narrows with his sorrel horse swimming behind.)
Like most farmers, Edgar Bryan is proud to be associated with good farmland. "Wye Island had the reputation of having the best wheat farms in the state," he said. He shook his head. "It's a shame they tore down that old schoolhouse. No one cared."
Mrs. Bryan stood up. "Rouse is the one person who could do it right," she said. "He's a gentleman, he really is. He brought a plan in advance and said what he is going to do. People have got to live somewhere."
Edgar Bryan was reclining in a loungechair. He turned his head and said sharply, "Let 'em go down to West Virginia and buy some of that land!"
Mrs. Bryan turned away from her husband. "The opposition to Rouse boils down to increased population, loss of game, and shellfish," she said, and then she repeated what Frank Hardy had been saying publicly ever since the Rouse option was announced a year ago. "But it's going to be developed." She passed the plate of cookies around and then sat down again. She and her husband spoke without rancor, but the subject of the Rouse plan warmed them up more than did the weather.
Edgar Bryan sat up. "You take that entire stretch down to Bennett's Point. All those houses have septic tanks and most of them are fifty to sixty feet away from the river. Where do you think that sewage goes?" Edgar Bryan asked, his voice rising. "Right into Wye River!" Mrs. Bryan reminded him that Rouse was planning to put in a waste treatment system for the village, and Edgar agreed that would control sewage better than septic tanks on fiveacre lots. "But it's boats that's the problem," he said. "I know what little bit of traffic there used to be. Now you go down to Wye River and the grandchildren are running outboards all over. And my grandchildren go down and raise just as much sam as any of them."
Edgar Bryan lay back and looked out through the screens at his lawn. He said quietly, "Everyone's running away from people, but there's no place to run now."
Mrs. Bryan looked at her husband and said in a soft voice, "It can't stay as it is. Mr. Rouse is the best developer."
"He's still a developer, Mom,'' said Edgar.
Mrs. Bryan persisted: "I'm interested in Wye Island because it's historical and beautiful, and I'm interested in it getting in the hands of people who will be sensitive about how it's used."
"Mr. Rouse is a fine man," said Edgar, "but he's a developer. And, buddy, when he gets in, it will be a lot different in five years than what it is now. Wye Island belongs in agriculture. I was hoping Mr. Houghton would buy it up and give it to Wye Institute. The federal government could pick up the tab on it and make it into a game preserve."
Edgar Bryan stood up abruptly and walked over to the screen, and the expression on his face mellowed. "Look, there goes a bobwhite walking across the grass. I love to see them walk across the grass."
We walked back through the comfortable old house and out onto the back porch. Edgar Bryan looked across his immense cornfield towards the row of trees along the head of the Wye River. Beyond was the old Mainbrace Farm which Frank Hardy, who is subdividing and selling lots there, calls Hickory Ridge Estates. The farm that Frank Hardy lives on is farther down the Wye. Between there and Edgar Bryan's farm is another Hardy subdivision called Governor Grason Manor. In mild exasperation Edgar said, "Frank Hardy has me surrounded." Then his voice firmed and his eyes sharpened, and Edgar Bryan, who has seen his native Eastern Shore change from an era when a good mule determined a day's travel, and who has seen the flow of city people spread across Kent Island, down the Wye River to Bennett Point, and along almost every stretch of waterfront he knows, summed up his feelings about how the Shore is changing and about Rouse's plan for Wye Island this way: "The most obnoxious thing on earth is a surplus of people." He was silent for a moment, thinking about the people from outside the Shore who were changing the type of life he had known so long. "You know one thing, most of the rich are very objectionable. Most of 'em are."
Edgar Bryan shoved his hands in his pockets. "I like farmers. I like the type of people they are."
A version of this article appeared in print in the April 1977 issue of Resources magazine.
