Pearl Gintling sees her hometown this way: if it wasn't for the North Point Peninsula -- a.k.a. Edgemere -- we'd still be part of England.
In September 1814, after landing at Fort Howard on the south end of the peninsula, the British were turned back at the Battle of North Point, just north of Edgemere, the longtime resident notes.
"Washington had burned, Philadelphia, Bladensburg burned. If the Battle of North Point had been lost, I think Fort McHenry would have been lost, too," Mrs. Gintling says. "This area is central to our country's history."
Residents say they stress this local history because outsiders don't seem to know the area existed before Bethlehem Steel, the huge steel manufacturing plant on neighboring Sparrows Point. They admit the steel manufacturer has played a huge role in the development of the area, but insist the area has much to offer unrelated to steel.
"Bethlehem Steel is an industrial giant and we've just been overshadowed by them for years," says Mrs. Gintling, whose father and husband both worked at the plant until their retirements.
"But these communities have come alive in the past 20 years. We have beautiful parks and waterfront. . . . The [community] council became very concerned about our environment and has worked very hard to improve it."
Their efforts have paid off on several occasions. For example, a huge state park has been created on land once targeted by Bethlehem Steel Corp. as a dumping ground. Residents have also fought off a proposed tire recycling plant, a chemical recycling plant and a prison.
Currently, they are trying to block a large residential development in an area called Todd's Point, believing the area would be better used as a county golf course.
"We're not against development," says Virginia Tolbert, who has lived in Edgemere for 65 years. "But they're trying to build too many houses back there.
"There's only one way in and out of this place and we already have traffic problems. All those people would come out at the same place" on North Point Boulevard, Mrs. Tolbert said.
Built on farmland
Most of the land that is today considered Edgemere was farmland until well into the 1930s.
The area's first official residents arrived in the late 1650s, when the Todd family of the Eastern Shore relocated and cultivated the land for tobacco, cotton and corn.
The family also ran a shipping business.
