Havre de Grace

Southern Style pulled into Havre de Grace on Thursday afternoon about 2:30 PM.  We just barely squeezed into the marina.

Yes we just made it through this entrance

We road our bikes into town to the Tidewater Grill for dinner.  They have a very pretty spot along the river.  Captain Keith and I sat inside their glassed in porch that looked out over the patio and river.

View from the enclosed porch at Tidewater

Sailboat races on the Susquehanna River

Friday morning we road our bikes all around Havre de Grace, taking in the sites and history.  In 1608, Captain John Smith became the first European to see the Susquehanna River.  He was followed sporadically by trappers and traders.  It was 1795 when a ferry was established between what is now Havre de Grace and Perryville, MD.  The Susquehanna and Tidewater canal opened in 1840 at the present day lockhouse.  This created a navigable waterway from the Chesapeake Bay into central Pennsylvania, linking Havre de Grace with canals that went all the way to the Mississippi.

LockHouse and remains of the canal preserved at the Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace

The Old Lock

That same year the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington Railroad reached town.  Havre de Grace became a center of local trade with fish packing houses, canaries, ice houses and light manufacturing.  The town was also gaining some fame as a hunting and fishing area.  Duck hunting in particular was big with local hunters making their living hunting ducks in sinkboxes and loading them on the trains to be sent to restaurants and hotels in Philadelphia.  Havre de Grace has done a very nice job of preserving its history.

This building was once the inn used by wealthy hunters coming to the area for duck hunting.  It is now privately owned and has been turned into apartments.

The Concord Point Lighthouse and Keeper's House were built in 1827.  It is the oldest publicly accessible lighthouse on the "Bay"  It is 36 feet high and originally was lit with 9 whale oil lamps.  A Fresnel lens was installed in 1854 and the light was automated in 1920.  Decommissioned in 1975, the town did extensive restoration on the light and it is now a museum and private aid to navigation.

Concord Point Lighthouse

The Havre de Grace Decoy Museum exhibits the long waterfowl traditions of the region.  Havre de Grace is the "Decoy Capital of the World".  Decoys have been a central element of Chesapeake culture for centuries. In the beginning, they were made for one purpose — to lure waterfowl within range of the hunter’s shotgun. Decoys were simple, utilitarian representations of ducks and geese rough-hewn from wood. No one considered them art. Today, decoys lure far more people than waterfowl. One is perhaps more likely to find a decoy adorning a collector’s mantelpiece than floating in a hunter’s rig. Contemporary carvers produce sophisticated works of art with century-old skills that have been passed down from master to apprentice for generations.

Inside the Decoy Museum

Stained glass window at the museum

Example of a sinkbox

These contraptions were floated in the river with decoys attached to them and the hunter in the center.  They floated at water level to better conceal the hunter.  Their use was outlawed in 1918

After all the biking and exploring, Keith and I stopped at Bomboy's Ice Cream.  They have been making homemade ice cream here for years.  Pengi wanted his picture with their cow.

Pengi at Bomboy's Icecream