The Last House Falls on a Sinking Chesapeake Bay Island

The last house on Holland Island has fallen.

The iconic wooden home, which became a symbol of the impact of rising sea levels and eroding land around the Chesapeake Bay, was knocked over by powerful winds over the weekend.

“It’s sad.  In a relatively short period of time, Holland Island went from a thriving community to nothing,” said Shawn Ridgely, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation boat captain who leads educational expeditions in the Bay and  photographed the house slumped over into the water this morning (picture above). “It’s mind-blowing to think that more than 100 years of memories have been wiped off the map."

The photo below shows what the house looked like this fall.

Holland Island is one of more than 500 Bay islands that have sunk beneath the waves over the last three centuries, according to author William B. Cronin's book, The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake. The islands vanished because of a combination of rising sea levels, erosion and the natural sinking of land around the Chesapeake region.

Some of these submerged places, like Holland and Barren islands, until the early 20th century held the Victorian homes, churches, and graveyards of oystermen. Others were hideouts for pirates and schemers  – folks who wanted isolation so they could hunt illegally, gamble, and launch bizarre schemes like breeding black cats for profit.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Holland Island, located about a dozen miles northwest of Crisfield on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore, was home to more than 360 residents and about 70 homes and stores. It also had a two-room school house, community hall, church and championship  baseball team.

Most of the Holland Island residents made a living by harvesting oysters in the winter and fishing and crabbing in the summer. Some also farmed wheat, fruit, vegetables and corn.

The island was about five miles long and one and a half miles wide.  But over the decades, rising Bay waters and natural sinking of the land (a delayed response to the retreat of glaciers some 12,000 years ago) ate away at the island. By 1914, residents began fleeing -- moving their homes by boat off the island to Crisfield, Cambridge and elsewhere in  Dorchester County.  In August 1918, a tropical storm hit the Bay, nearly destroying the church and prompting the last families to leave by 1922, according to Cronin’s book.

As more and more houses disappeared under the water, a few people returned occasionally for crabbing and hunting.  The last house on the island was used for a while as a hunting lodge.  But then that, too, stopped.  The island shrank to a marshy sliver of its former self.

For the last several years, the last house (as shown at left) was surrounded completely by water at high tide. From a distance, it looked like a box rising up out of a lonely expanse of bay.  With the human residents all gone, scores of brown pelicans moved in.  News stories about the impacts of climate change and rising sea levels on the Bay featured pictures of the house and brown pelicans. The birds are native to Florida, but in recent decades moved north into the Chesapeake, in part because of warming winters.

The house's owner is Stephen White, a methodist minster who lives on the Eastern Shore.  Over the last 15 years, he spent about $150,000 of his own money in a valiant but ultimately futile quest to save the house from the rising waters by building up the shoreline with sand bags, timber, even an old barge, according to a Baltimore Sun article.

Shawn Ridgely, who works out of CBF’s Karen Noonan Center in nearby Dorchester County, said the house was standing last week. But then powerful winds started blowing last Thursday and over the weekend.  By Tuesday, the house had collapsed, he said.

Ridgely took a group of about 20 middle school students from Baltimore County out to the island this morning. He showed them the remains of the house, and used it as an example of how climate change is already impacting the Chesapeake Bay.

“They were blown away,” Ridgely said.

By Tom Pelton

Chesapeake Bay Foundation

 (Photos at top and bottom by Shawn Ridgely of CBF; middle photo Jay Fleming of the International League of Conservation Photographers)

Comments

[Paul Burke - Author Journey Home]

Nice handling of the rather aggressively toned climate change deniers - I actually prefer to call them the pollution is good crowd - you can't aim smoke stack after smoke stack at the sky and not change the biology of not only the planet but your own body.

Earth and its inhabitants are a totally integrated system and 100 plus years of the industrial revolution has deposited more than its share of sediments and chemical poisons into our rivers, land, air, food chain and our tissue and blood stream as well....

Nice article and good discussion - the whole tone of the aha the link doesn't work crowd is disappointing - just look around mates. Don't be mad at the environmentalist we're trying to help and actually care.

And whats so politically threatening about changing industry to become sustainable when actually leaving the status quo to operate with impunity is the cause of not only the demise of our collective health but the demise of our market system as well.

Jobs vs the environment is a phony argument - as we change from a dirty energy society - the clean energy jobs will emerge - ten fold.

The dirty energy boys are still making a boat load of cash so they're not going to go without a fight...but the truth of the matter is inevitable and the sooner we lay the foundation and move to a clean energy reality the better off and less expensive it will be - including all the reclamation projects that need to happen (hint that creates jobs)

[Kurt]

If anybody decides to go see this house as the Bay is swallowing it up. Please go see the next town destined to suffer this wrath. The town is Saxis, Va. The erosion over the years has taken it's toll on the shoreline. My family has owned a house there for 35 years and we see the Bay has taken quite a bit of shoreline. The town was like Holland Island once was when we first bought the house, crabs and oysters were abundant. I remember my parents buying a gallon of oysters for $20 at the point of the island.
The Army Corp of Engineers had planned on building a jetty along the shoreline to help control the erosion. The project fell through with the failing economy. I would like to find a way to save this precious island which was founded in 1664. It has a lot of history and was once inhabited by Indians, I find arrowheads along the shore. Bottom line, this jetty project will cost an estimated 8 million, with a population of under 200, I fear that this place will be written about here in the future as the last house there falls victim to the Bay.

[Skull & Bonz]

I am a member of the CBF, Mr. Burke! I believe everything that you do and I kick my neighbor's butts everytime they get outta' line which doesn't happen too often because they don't like to get their butt's kicked!

I guarantee that I have even contributed more than YOU merely by choosing not to have any children, i.e., oxygen breathers and pollution makers.

Bottom line...society is doomed by erosion so do yerself' a favor and buy some mountain-top property! I HAVE and AM doing MY part, but untill the other countries do THEIR part, it ain't enough! I'm just sayin'...

[Skull & Bonz]

...and you cannot "visit" the ruins of the house anymore. The current owner, Bob Fitzgerald burned them to the ground to keep them from falling into the Bay and polluting it further...

[lmc]

All of tidewater was and is a swamp. Swamps are notorious for being wet and mushy. Another thing I would like to point out, the Chesapeake Bay was terribly polluted for A Long Time - until serious clean up efforts lowered the toxicity, the wildlife was scarce to say the least. Yes it is a bit warmer here now but I would put a little money on our cleaner waters being what brought the Pelicans to town. The jury is still out to lunch on the true cause of sea level rise and there are alot of theories. It seems silly to discount any theory or to count on any theory until it is proven - but we should not stop searching for answers. It makes no sense at all to give up any conservation efforts or to just "do like the Chinese" or whoever you blame for the condition of our planet. You are along for the ride so why not try to make it fun for everyone? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rejoice!

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[John Pory]

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[indoor waterfall]

That was quite sad. The island vanished maybe because of global warming as well. Water rises to its peak because of that. Climate change was the main reason. Its so sad to think fr the loss. More Power for this site. Thanks for sharing.

[Mary Ann Moxon]

Another Chesapeake "island" that has disappeared since we sailed near it in 2004 is Grog Island, off the mouth of Indian Creek in Fleets Bay, VA. Only a few dead pine trunks are now visible.

The out-of-date cruising guides that describe Grog as a great place to picnic remind us sailors how tentative these just-above-sea level high spots are.

We sailed by James Island (really a group of small islands) at the mouth of the Little Choptank River two years ago and found some of them submerged then. No telling if any trees remain alive on them now.

[Maui Vacation Rentals]

It's very eery to see pictures of that house standing (now slumped) in the middle of the water like that. It is like a ghost town with only one house.

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