Bay Migrations

So we’ve come to Accomack County, Virginia, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Population 31,500 (and shrinking); average elevation 16 feet (same). This is a young landscape changing fast. Only three thousand years ago, rising seas finished flooding the valley of the lower Susquehanna River, shaping the present outline of the Bay. 1 Humans before and since have modified the edges, and in recent centuries they have done so while contending with another powerful abstraction — real estate. An 1851 map from the U.S. Coast Survey says there used to be a home at the Guard Shore, but there’s no trace of it now. 2 The nearest building is a mile away, along the road to the mainland. That house site was on the 1851 map, too, but not the road. Back then, the two properties were connected directly to the commons — the Bay itself.