Over five years ago, a group calling itself the Eastern Shoreway Alliance, (E.S.A), drafted and submitted a proposal designed to “rebrand” US 301, the “Blue Star Memorial Highway” as the “Eastern Shoreway”.
Aimed at highlighting the historical, cultural and environmental value of the route and its contiguous farmland and watersheds, the ESA’s master plan included the addition of interpretive signage, turnoffs, a revamped Bay Country Welcome Center, and a significant degree of landscape architecture to the route’s course between Queenstown, Maryland and Middletown, Delaware.
The ESA looked to the Maryland Scenic Byway program—an offshoot of the S.H.A. and its Transportation Enhancement Program— for approval, and appealed for the inclusion of a “new category” of high speed “special routes”. Citing the Merritt Parkway and The Blue Ridge Parkway as equivalents for New England and Appalachia, the proposal also sought resonance with the language of the preexisting Scenic Byway Corridor Management Plan’s broad directives for celebrating the regional identity of the Eastern Shore.
Collaboratively realized by Adkins Arboretum director Ellie Altman and New York-based author Tony Hiss, whose work often focuses on the use and “preservation of place”, the ESA’s vision was to provide: “a special driving experience for through and local travelers that is educational and memorable, that renders visible the beauty of the landscape, and that inspires its preservation and protection.”
The proposal, however, never received enough local or statewide support, and currently exists in some strange in-between place where innovative but unusual ideas reside for indefinite periods of time, or until they receive attention from the right people.
“The Eastern Shoreway,” continues the ESA document, “has the potential to serve as a model for a national road network of Twenty-first Century Highways for America’s Special Places that provide motorists with safe, efficient, and rewarding driving experiences while increasing the appreciation and, ultimately, protection of regional landscapes.”
“At the moment,” wrote Hiss in an early draft of the proposal dating back to 2002,“two futures seem equally possible [for the Eastern Shore]. One would come from without; large-scale-development interests, having filled the Western shore, look at the Eastern Shore, one of the last large open spaces on the eastern seaboard, and see “empty” space waiting to be filled with suburban extensions[…] A second vision, primarily generated by the Eastern Shore’s own citizens and communities—farmers, watermen, village and town residents, citizen groups, and town and county officials, sees an existing treasure ready to be multiplied ( the Eastern Shore’s own model for growing/developing responsibly—incrementally, organically).”
Had the proposal been realized, granting a special “scenic” designation for the route, it wouldn’t have meant direct sanctions against development, but what it could have done, as the framers had hoped, was reinforce the “sense of place” required to preserve the area’s regional identity. Now, ten years later, U.S. Route 301 is still the “Blue Star Memorial Highway”, and the Eastern Shore is still very much at the same “crossroads” described by Hiss. How did Eastern Shoreway Association reach their current state of obsolescence?
Concrete, substantive answers have been anything but easy to find, especially given that the proposal last surfaced in the bureaucratic landscape of SHA grants in 2007, where it was rejected.
By way of explanation, Terry Maxwell the director for the SHA’s Maryland Scenic Byways program, claimed via email that,
“…although US 301 has an undisturbed rural quality, it does not possess unique intrinsic qualities of regional significance as required within our criteria. Also, the nomination did not have all of the required supporting endorsements from each of the counties through which the proposed byway passes.”
Taken together with the language of the actual proposal, these reasons for the rejection seem at odds with the list of documented support the ESA presented. At the time of the 2007 draft, the ESA’s proposal listed the “warm embrace” of the Maryland Office of Tourism, State Senator E.J. Pipkin, and U.S. Congressman Wayne Gilchrest.
In addition to these bigger endorsements, the ESA also claimed allegiance with “tourism and planning directors and environmental planners of Queen Anne’s, Kent, and Cecil counties.” The ESA was even working closely with the Chesapeake National Scenic Byway steering committee, which agreed to help ESA pitch the Eastern Shoreway plan to Maxwell at the SHA.
The resounding silence of local landowners, whose property would likely have been made into spectacle by this interpretive signage, and potentially trodden over as curious motorists sought out the ecological wonders of the “whale wallows” —lowland bog habitats— is not to be ignored.
Thus, despite this initial wave of enthusiasm, it is evident now that something – perhaps a whole bevy of unseen factors that we can only speculate about at this point, amounted to a wet blanket on the project.
“I spent some time trying to get it designated as a scenic byway—because I think it is scenic,” said Altman to the Spy, “but there is not a lot of muscle behind the Scenic Byway Program. When I was pushing for this, tourism directors of Kent and Queen Anne’s county were not supportive. Their focus has been on making 213 a scenic byway. They were fearful that by designating 301 as a scenic byway, they would detract from preexisting funds for scenic byways that go through towns.”
So, there is the unavoidable reality of a lack of funding for a project like this.
There is also Maxwell’s claim that route 301 and its environs lack “unique intrinsic qualities of regional significance”, a qualification so vague, so subjective, that it would seem like a bureaucratic sidestep.
“People travel 301 and say it’s boring,” said Altman, “but 301 has everything that people move to the shore for; the headwaters of the Sassafras, the Chester… and they can still easily access these historic towns from 301.”
In its “Preliminary Documentation” section, the ESA proposal rhapsodizes over the “..slowly woven tapestry of exceptionally rich farm fields and pastures, natural woodlands and meadows, tidal estuaries and marshes…” 301 courses through. (You don’t need to have read the proposal to be able to appreciate this.) If these “intrinsic” qualities exist in some sad realm of second tier scenery, then perhaps what we need to understand about 301’s deficiencies as a scenic route is some arcane Enlightenment era contraption capable of telling us how pretty a landscape really is. The point is; it is entirely likely that 301’s exclusion from some sort of “scenic” designation by the SHA had less to do with aesthetics than a lack of participation from the three counties. In hindsight, it would appear that the ESA’s agenda–which we might call unequivocally environmentalist–ran counter to long term plans for the land abutting 301. This also brings up the important issue of who in Kent, Queen Anne’s, and Cecil Counties ultimately has influence over how the land on either side of 301 is used, and for that matter, interpreted. Evidently it is not Adkins Arboretum et al.
“Since the initial discussion,” said Maxwell via email, “both Kent and Queen Anne’s have elected at least one new Commissioner so we do not [sic] an inclination that there is support for such an effort.”
While time did not permit contacting commissioners in Kent and Cecil counties, David Dunmeyer, a commissioner for Queen Anne’s county was willing to give his insights to the Spy.
“There’s really some extreme pressures for development in Queen Anne’s County,” he said via phone interview, “What you need to understand about our farm community is that they are not all pro-preservation. They send mixed messages; they say they want to protect farming but they also want to get the equity out of their land because that’s their nest-egg.”
“There’s a real tension here between what’s logical development, and what’s feel good,” said Chestertown attorney Stephan Meehan. As a spokesman for the Eastern Shore Leadership Council, Meehan has been critical of the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association’s opposition to job creating projects like the FASTC facility that would have been built outside of Ruthsburg in 2010.
“ESA died because no state or federal legislative authority, local political or property owner will, and yes, in tight budget times, the cost of a major road sign promoting a concept is incongruous with thrifty government” said Meehan.
“The battle’s over creating jobs in the economy and zero growth,” he said. “You’d be surprised how expensive it is to put up a sign.”
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