Cambridge

Greg Vande Visser pulled the old advertisement from an iron safe in
his graphic design office on Cambridge’s main street.
The safe and the ad are relics of the Phillips Packing Company, once
Cambridge’s largest employer. During the war years the firm did more
canning than Campbell’s. But, its vast complex of brick warehouses
and factories clustered on the east side of town closed in the
1950s, leading Dorchester’s county seat into decades of economic
stagnation.

“It was a one horse town,” Vande Visser says. “When Phillips went
out of business, there went the town.”

This is the “old” Cambridge, a town long mired in the past, whose
center is only a few blocks from Route 50 beach traffic and a few
miles from cosmopolitan Easton. Despite the proximity, Cambridge draws few tourists.
It is a place where quiet churchyards hold half a dozen Maryland governors
and in whose countryside Underground Railroad conductor
Harriet Tubman was born a slave. At the turn-of-the-century
Cambridge was the nation’s No. 3 oyster exporter. Today, it is a town with double-digit unemployment.

Vande Visser found the ad, the safe and several other pieces of
Phillips memorabilia in February 2002 when he purchased the 20,000-square-foot building that had housed Phillips’ accounts in
the heart of downtown Cambridge. The 1910 structure had been virtually dormant for years, Vande Visser says. Like many of the historic buildings along Race Street, Cambridge’s main drag, it was frozen in time, encased by
forgetfulness and neglect.

Vande Visser and his business partner Steve Von Den Bosch are in the process of bringing it back. The Eastern Shore natives have already moved their
two-man graphic design business here from Easton. Next, they plan to
lease out studio space to artists and open a gallery to display
their work.

“Artists could turn this place around,” Vande Visser says noting
the frisson of culture and cool that artists bring to an area, as well
as the industry they create — everything from coffeehouses to hang out
in to shops that sell their paint and other supplies. “The sky’s the limit
here.”

This effort is part of a growing trend in Cambridge to attract
tourists. A $3
million visitor’s center opened in 1999 near Route 50 and the
Choptank River to direct people to the historic homes, museums and
businesses in Cambridge’s center seven blocks west. Down the street
from Vande Visser’s budding arts center is Joie de Vivre, a small shop
selling clothing, jewelry and artwork that opened in 2002.

“Things are changing very fast,” says Anthony Thomas who opened the
Canvasback Restaurant and wine bar in November 2000 in an old Woolworth’s on Race Street.

The catalyst behind much of this development — and the crucial link
in these plans — is the 400-room Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay. The $150 million resort looms on 350 waterfront
acres just across Route 50 from town. Opened in August 2002,
the resort comprises three pools, two
beaches, a spa, golf course and marina, as well as the hopes and
dreams of a town wishing for a turnaround.

“Buy a building now,” says Charles Kelly, owner of Craig’s Pharmacy,
which has offered medicine, cards and gifts in downtown Cambridge since
the 19th century. “You’ll kick yourself in five years if you don’t.”

A historic town

To discover Cambridge, it is necessary to slow down. The
town’s charms are quiet ones and cannot be appreciated
from your driver’s seat as you pass by on Route 50, which humps over the Choptank River
beside Cambridge before loping east toward Salisbury and Ocean City, Maryland.
The visitor’s center is a good place to start. It’s easy to spot with its 110-foot-high
Teflon and fiberglass sail arching at the southern foot of the Route
50 bridge.

Peruse the restaurant, shop and museum brochures offered here and be
sure to pick up a copy of the historic walking tour. A boardwalk by
the riverbank offers a nice introduction to Dorchester County’s
natural history, where 1,700 miles of shoreline give it the most in
the state.

Hop back in the car for the short cruise into downtown.
The road glides across a drawbridge at Cambridge Creek. Though quiet
today, a century ago this narrow body of water would have been full
of sailing ships jostling and jockeying to offload their catch
before heading back out into the Choptank River and Chesapeake Bay.

Stretch your legs on High Street. A stroll along this street’s short two blocks to the river — beside stately captain’s homes — reveals Cambridge’s maritime heritage and the wealth the former port town once enjoyed.

The gothic spire of Christ Episcopal Church rises here near the
head of High Street. The third church built on this site (the first was
erected in 1693), Christ Church’s burial ground is the final resting
place of settlers, Revolutionary and Civil War heroes and five
Maryland governors.

High Street’s shady trees are what impressed novelist and Cambridge
native John Barth. In “The Floating Opera,” his National Book Award-nominated first novel, he describes them as, “oaks and cottonwood
poplars that rustle loftily above you like pennants atop mighty
masts; that when leaved transform the shabbiest houses into
mansions; that corrugate the concrete of the wide sidewalks with the
idle flexing of their roots.”

In one historic manse, you’ll find the Dorchester Arts Center’s
small shop and gallery with a rotating selection of work. At the Cambridge House bed and breakfast, its red brick Victorian exterior and period furnishings give guests a
taste of a well-to-do sea captain’s life.

High Street ends at Long Wharf on the Choptank. This is where the
Nathan of Dorchester, a modern, volunteer-built skipjack like those
that plied these waters for centuries, ties up. It offers sailing
excursions and charters in the warmer months. Boat trips are also
available May through October on the Cambridge Lady, which docks a
short distance up Cambridge Creek. Those seeking more aquatic history
should try the James B. Richardson Maritime Museum up the street or
the Brannock Maritime Museum across town.

Bounty of the bay

After learning so much about Cambridge’s nautical history, it would
be a shame not to sample some of the bay’s bounty. Snappers Waterfront Cafe serves crab cakes and other traditional seafood
dishes with a view of Cambridge’s old working waterfront. The Place on Race Cafe offers light lunches and other snacks, as well as coffee
drinks. Across the street, the Canvasback Restaurant serves up a
traditional pub menu for lunch, as well as some more complex dinner
entrees. Try the pan-seared rockfish with orange beurre blanc or the
canvasback duck with lingonberry sauce.

Blackwater surprise

Those who prefer their waterfowl on the wing won’t want to miss
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, 12 miles south of town. These
26,000 acres of protected marsh and woodlands are a haven for
migrating Canada geese, tundra swans and more than 20 species of
ducks. Blackwater is also the center of the greatest nesting density
of bald eagles on the eastern seaboard, north of Florida.

Water dominates the landscape here and the views from the six and one-half-mile wildlife drive can be stunning. Great blue herons work the
muddy flats while ospreys soar above the deeper waters. Looking
south, the marshy maze of the Blackwater River stretches to the horizon.
All that breaks the line between the powder blue
sky and the brackish water are the small copses of trees marking the
higher ground.

Making her way north in darkness, Harriet Tubman didn’t have these
visual clues. Following many of these same waterways, Tubman used the North Star to escape from a plantation in nearby Bucktown in 1849. She would return to the south 19 times throughout her life, helping more than 300 slaves escape and gaining a $40,000 price tag on her head.

The modest Underground Railroad Museum in Cambridge offers displays
recounting her life and guided tours of Harriet Tubman sites
throughout the county. Its president, Evelyn W. Townsend, is also
a storehouse of local knowledge.

Townsend was a young schoolteacher that summer night in 1967 when much
of Pine Street’s business district — the center of African-American
Cambridge since the 19th century — went up in flames after a speech
by militant civil rights activist H. Rap Brown ignited a riot.

These simmering racial tensions can sometimes still present
themselves in a town that has long lacked many economic
opportunities, Townsend says.

But she is hopeful that the
promised land is on the horizon.
The Hyatt resort holds the possibility of
hundreds of jobs and the town’s residents
hope that some of its wealthy visitors will take a break from
their mud wraps long enough to spend some money downtown, creating a viable tourism industry in long-forgotten Cambridge.

Townsend says the town is gaining momentum and “the Moses of her
people” can help show Cambridge the way. Tubman’s life holds lessons
for people looking to overcome great odds — valuable lessons in a
town taking its first steps in several generations toward economic
freedom.

“We have to remember the past, but use it to go forward,” Townsend
says.