Tred Avon Oxford

Talbot County, with more than 600 miles of tidal shoreline, has been water-oriented since earliest times. Ringed by such rivers as the Choptank, Tuckahoe and Wye, it looks out on the west to Chesapeake Bay and is transected by the broad Miles, the beautiful Tred Avon, and countless smaller creeks and coves. The quality of Talbot life has long reflected this maritime flavor. Its first English settlers, arriving in the 1650s, traveled by sloop, barge, priogue and Indian log canoe. Its first town, Oxford, developed as a port-of-call for English merchants whose ships traded finished goods for tobacco directly at the plantation wharves. Its shipbuilding center, St. Michaels, created the swift, sharp-hulled sailing vessels which became famous Photo by Don Biresch as the “Baltimore Clippers” of the War of 1812.