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on the Upper Eastern Shore has always revolved around its small towns. With fewer than 20,000 residents, Easton is
the largest town in the region. The virtues of small communities, tight-knit social networks, and quaint, pedestrian-scaled towns are easily encountered at almost every intersection across the four counties.
Towns grew around the primary local economies. Along the coasts, villages developed of watermen, seafood pickers,
and cannery workers. Inland villages developed around distribution centers for agricultural goods. The county seats became the largest towns because of the variety of services available there.
Because these services and economies can only foster limited growth, the population of the Upper Eastern Shore has grown rather slowly over the past 375 years.
Two apparently contradictory forces created the current landscape of scattered rural villages. For most of its
history, the Upper Eastern Shore developed in relative isolation. Thanks to the Chesapeake Bay, it was not easy to reach, so people did not flock to the region as much as they did to other beautiful
places. Indeed, one still refers to being ãonä the Eastern Shore, as though it were an island disconnected from the mainland. At the same time, the local economy was well-connected to the rest of the
world with its shipping lines and railroads. The combination of these two forces allowed the economy to enjoy spurts of wealth in very small doses. Much of the development seen today has occurred since
the construction of the bay bridges.
There is no general concentration of small towns on the Upper Eastern Shore. Such towns are evenly distributed
across the region, although the density is marginally greater in the west than in the east.
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