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Three factors changed the relationship of land and water at the turn of the century and into the 1900s. First,
railroads supplanted ships and steamboats as the primary shipping technology. Second, carriages, automobiles, and trucks using good roads replaced boats as the primary means of personal transportation.
Trucking later supplanted railroads. Third, the Chesapeake Bay fisheries declined sharply, undermining the seafood industry. The result of these factors was a decline in use of the waters of the bay and
rivers. The population of watermen and their fleet of skipjacks declined.
In the 1950s construction began on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Soon the region swelled with pleasure-seekers drawn
to the mild climate, comfortable atmosphere, hospitable people, and easy lifestyles offered by the Upper Eastern Shore. Three hundred fifty years after Europeans began to settle in this area, the land was
rediscovered by people drawn here for the same reasons as before. The volume of people using the bridge was so great that a second span was added in the early 1970s. Tourism and recreation had become a
major industry, due in part to the publication of James Michenerās novel Chesapeake. In places like Kent Narrows and St. Michaels recreational boating and tourism has become the dominant industry.
The next phase of history for the Upper Eastern Shore is remarkably different from the previous phases. The use and perception of the region has changed, even as the forms remain.
People continue to look fondly at the coasts and landscapes and think of Captain John Smith, the Chestertown Tea Party,
the Underground Railroad, and the plantations, but these are not living features of this time and place. Many changes have been wrought in this landscape recently. Farmers have changed their produce for the
fourth time. Demand has shifted from crops that feed humans to crops like sorghum, soybeans, and feed-corn used to grow poultry, and, to a lesser extent, beef. New monuments have been erected to life in the
20th century. Powerlines, billboards, and grain elevators tower above the land throughout the region.
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