NEWS
By Greg Garland | July 28, 1999
TYLERTON -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening hopped a ride on a fire engine, pulled a rope that set a church bell ringing, learned to pick crabs and otherwise made his presence known yesterday during his first-ever trip to Maryland's Smith Island.Not that any of the 347 people who inhabit the island's three small towns -- Ewell, Tylerton and Rhodes Point -- could have been unaware that the governor, along with an entourage of media, state officials and others, was paying a visit.Even the sea gulls perched atop the piers and the herons wading through the Chesapeake Bay grasses seemed to take note of the hubbub as the ferry Chelsea Lane Tyler -- the boat that takes the island's youngsters to school on the mainland -- shuttled the group around Smith Island.
NEWS
By FRANK ROYLANCE | September 16, 1999
Marylanders braced today for torrential rains, high winds, pounding surf and bayshore flooding as Hurricane Floyd bore down on the state after crashing ashore early this morning in North Carolina.Tropical storm warnings were posted from Baltimore County south to Southern Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay north of the Virginia line, the entire Eastern Shore and Ocean City. Sustained winds are expected to reach 40 to 50 mph today in Baltimore, and 50 to 70 mph on the Shore with higher gusts. Twenty-foot surf was likely at the beaches.
NEWS
By Tom Horton | October 15, 1999
It is one of the bay's most stirring comebacks. The regal brown pelican, a bird hammered low in past decades by DDT and other now-banned pesticides, has been rapidly expanding its range.Ten years ago, it was rare to sight a pelican around most of the Chesapeake. Then, in the early 1990s, a nesting colony appeared on a sandy spit known as Shanks Island, just below the Maryland-Virginia line, around Smith Island.Pelicans returnThat colony now numbers more than 100 pelicans each summer. And last year, Maryland biologists discovered 15 pairs nesting for the first time in the Maryland portion of the bay, on Spring Island, a few miles west of Deal Island in Tangier Sound.
NEWS
By CHRIS GUY | July 2, 1999
SMITH ISLAND -- For Elmer Evans and more than 100 of his neighbors, the issue is as clear as the heads of churchgoers on Sunday mornings -- there's no reason to change this island's 300-year-old ban on alcohol sales.For the third time in a dozen years, almost one-third of the citizenry of this remote Chesapeake Bay community, most of them tee-totaling Methodists, piled into two ferryboats this week to attend a hearing at the Somerset County Courthouse. There, they pleaded with the county liquor board to reject newcomer Stephen Eades' plans for beer and wine sales at one of the island's two small grocery stores.
FEATURES
By ROB KASPER | July 29, 1999
Maybe this crab cake tastes so good because I am eating it on Smith Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Or maybe this crab cake tastes so good because of the effort involved in getting here.I drive two hours from Baltimore to Point Lookout State Park on the southern tip of St. Mary's County early in the morning. By 10 a.m., I hop aboard a ferry, the Chelsea Lane Tyler, and make the 1 1/2-hour passage from the Western Shore to the island.The boat deposits me and other passengers on the docks of Ewell, where the Bayside Inn, a family-style restaurant, serves up crab cakes and other fare.
NEWS
By Chris Guy | July 29, 1999
PRINCESS ANNE -- Smith Island, a fishing community known for its pious sobriety since the 1600s, will keep its ban on alcohol sales.A handful of islanders sat quietly last night as the three-member Somerset County liquor board rejected shopkeeper Stephen Eades' plans for a seven-day tavern license that would have allowed beer and wine to be sold at one of the two small grocery stores that serve 347 residents who live in the isolated villages of Ewell, Tylerton...
NEWS
By Chris Parks | December 15, 1997
WHEN THE one-room schoolhouse at Tylerton on Smith Island closed last year, it seemed to many residents that their world was coming to an end. For April Tyler, the last teacher at Maryland's last one-room schoolhouse, the world was turned upside down. She was transferred to a middle school in Crisfield, commuting daily from the island. Ms. Tyler had hoped the school board would fund a teaching position for her on the island when classes began in September. Sadly, it was not to be, and in late August, Ms. Tyler and her family left Smith Island.
NEWS
By Chris Parks | May 27, 1997
EWELL -- There is much to love about Smith Island: pristine wetlands that serve as a protein factory for the Chesapeake Bay; magnificent sunsets unimpeded by the clutter of civilization; the striking absence of brain-rattling noise, and the opportunity to see great blue heron and other waterfowl in their natural habitat.There are also 350 hardy human souls who still live on the island -- some of the finest people you would ever want to meet.Sadly, Maryland's last inhabited offshore island is rapidly vanishing due to erosion.
NEWS
June 14, 1996
Fire department ready, willing, ableYour June 2 editorial ("Can't skimp on fire protection") hit the mark on many issues regarding the Baltimore Fire Department. Yes, the number of firefighters employed by the department is smaller today. Yes, the incidence of fires has continued to escalate in the city. Yes, the department is experiencing a deficit in its overtime budget. But the implication is that all of this has occurred in a management vacuum. It has not.Since my appointment in April 1992, and with the support of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, the Fire Department has been able to enhance its fleet with the purchase of 12 fire engines, seven fire trucks, a new command vehicle, a hazardous materials vehicle, a collapse rescue vehicle, a special operation van, a SCUBA van and 18 medic units.
NEWS
By Timothy B. Wheeler | May 12, 1996
TYLERTON -- The usual signs of spring have appeared here on Smith Island. The "snowball bush" by Miss Virginia Evans' house is blooming. Pesky gnats fill the air when the breeze dies down.But the season also has brought signs of anger and despair to this 400-year-old fishing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Four red-and-white billboards have been erected by the island's watermen, attacking the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for its advocacy of government restrictions on their livelihood.