“You’re from somewhere, aren’t you?”

―Elizabeth Hadaway, American poet

From Cecil County to Somerset, public murals dot the Eastern Shore, adding an unexpected sense of place. They help visitors get the hang of Maryland’s nine Shore counties. They connect Crisfield to Cambridge to Chestertown. They embroider the relationships of locality and special settings with a sense of how locals perceive their place, characteristics, and attachments. The murals include cultures and sacred places — indigenous and more recent — that may be endangered.

Crisfield (Somerset County) — Dockside Crab
Artist: Robin Daniels
Location: Town Dock

Maryland’s southern-most community, Crisfield is famous for its seafood — especially Callinectes sapidus (blue crab) — and for the J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clam Bake, its annual mid-summer gathering of Maryland politicos. This giant rendition of a blue crab — “You can’t miss it!” — is at the very center of one of Maryland’s crabbiest towns, on the same dock where visitors are ferried to even crabbier Smith and Tangier islands. This photo also documents “Old Crisfield” to the left and “Condo Crisfield” to the right, one “place” crashing into the other.

Cambridge (Dorchester) — African American Watermen
Artist: Michael Rosato
Location: Visitor Center, Choptank River Bridge (Rte. 50)

This tribute to African American watermen on the Chesapeake jumps out at you from the north wall of the Cambridge Visitor’s Center at the eastern end of the Choptank River bridge on Rte. 50. The watermen strain to haul their catch. They’re aboard a sailing vessel — a skipjack? — with another skipjack in the background, and a red buoy close by.

Chestertown (Kent) — El Trompo (The Top)
Artist: Fredy Granillo
Location: 105 S. Cross Street

A Salvadoran musician, painter, and ceramist, Fredy Granillo brings his childhood sense of place to Chestertown, where he lives with his family. Furniture-maker Bob Ortiz says El Trompo is painted on the wall outside his studio as an acknowledgment “of the Latin American community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the Arts in Chestertown’s Arts and Entertainment District, and my 25 years of making furniture in this space, my second home!”

“It seems like I’m always leaving my home. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time.”

– Junot Diaz

Denton (Caroline) — Snapshots in Time
Artist: Photographers unknown
Location: Business Rte. 404 bridge across Choptank River

Once there was a drawbridge at this spot; before that, a ferry. The Choptank River runs tidal here. Though the river was once a commercial highway — and by night, another sort of highway for intrepid Black self-emancipators — it still carries considerable boat traffic, mostly fisherfolk after catfish and striped bass. These giant archival photos — steamboat circa 1904 and sailboats circa 1896 — grace the newest river crossing, an arched bridge that carries Business Rte. 404 east and west. Denton’s waterfront park and visitor’s center are beneath it.

East New Market (Dorchester) — Trompe l’Oeil
Artist: Michael Rosato
Location: Main Street and Railroad Avenue (Rte. 14)

This mural depicts what was likely a nearby gathering of Native and Colonial Americans, possibly on a local market day. In the foreground, what could be a hand-made crab trap is back-packed by a Native. Another Native barters with a Black man, possibly over cloth goods in a trunk. A White girl sits in the foreground while Natives and Colonials converse in the background. In the second panel, a bridled horse incongruously sticks his head through a panel in a door. It’s almost as if Mr. Rosato is saying, “You had to have been there.”

“People aren’t interested in blueprints. They want to sense the painter’s involvement and pleasure in the subject. Paint a sense of place.”

—Paul Strisik, American painter

Oxford (Talbot)  — “The Oyster Gatherers”
Artist: Banks Street Studio
Location: N. Morris and High Streets

In this section of the full mural, watermen pose aboard their deadrise workboats, holding oystering tongs. With one boat named the Hannah Lewis, and another displaying its registration number on the bow — MD 3133 AE — the mural appears to depict actual vessels and individuals on the south wall of the Oxford Market.

Hurlock (Dorchester) — Hurlock RR Station
Artist: Michael Rosato
Location: Corner of Poplar and Main Streets

Most Shore communities were once served by railroads. One could take a passenger train from Chestertown to Baltimore and back in a long day. With no passenger service remaining, freight trains still carry bulk chemicals, fertilizers, building materials, and grains. Now and then, you may spot a Maryland & Delaware RR freight train trundling along from a transfer point on the Norfolk-Southern line in Delaware to Worton, Centreville, Federalsburg, or Snow Hill. But look fast! They’re few and far between.  

Ocean City (Worchester) — Sunrise Pier
Artist: Jessica L. Schlegel
Location: Philadelphia Ave. and Wicomico St.

On its barrier island, Ocean City’s beach and boardwalk beckon sun-and-surf seekers almost year-round. “OC” is also known as the “White Marlin Capital of the World.” You must get up early to see the sun rise between fishing pier pilings! Although most of this resort has high-rise condos and hotels from beach to bay, the lower end near the Assateague Inlet preserves many of its original, cottage-like homes and still feels like an archetypal beach town.

People say to me, “I went there” — China, India, the Pacific, Albania — “and it wasn’t like that.” I say, “Because I am not you.”

—Paul Theroux, voyager and travel writer

Rock Hall (Kent) — Dozen Workboats
Artist: Ken Castelli
Location: “Clam House,” Chesapeake Avenue

An abstract mural of a dozen massed workboats cleverly uses this old seafood processing plant’s side windows as the boats’ windshields. With its harborside location, Rock Hall’s “Clam House” once served the bayside town’s watermen and seafood industry. Now owned by the State of Maryland, the building has been converted to a sail loft and recently housed a maritime museum.

Worton (Kent) — Mosaic
Artist: Designed by Sue Stockman
Location: Kent County High School

This complicated glass mosaic was created by Kent County High School students “with the hope of expressing a sense of place in their personal lives and the greater culture and beauty of the natural environment of Kent County” (Kent County News). It’s easy to discern elements of local environment and culture, including agriculture and fishing, land and water, wildlife, farm machinery and boats, and a tree-of-life motif which could explain the deep culture of worship.