By Kathryn Masten
From the shores of Vienna, the winding Nanticoke River reminds us of centuries of crossings, memories, and decisions.
At the eastern end of Vienna’s Race Street, where the pavement turns into a concrete boat ramp, the Nanticoke River lay frozen during our recent cold snap. The ramp slopes cleanly into the water, a quiet ending to a road that once carried people across rather than stopping them short.
Long before ferries or bridges, this shoreline was known as Emperor’s Landing, a Nanticoke trading site and gathering place. The river was a transportation corridor for Indigenous communities for centuries, and this bank served as a point of exchange long before Vienna appeared on any colonial map. The sense of passage that lingers here today is older than the town itself.
From 1671 to 1828, a ferry crossed somewhere along this stretch. It carried travelers, livestock, wagons, and, later, early automobiles. A tollhouse once stood near the foot of Race Street – a small, plain structure that anchored the crossing and kept the accounts. When the first bridge was built in 1828, the ferry was retired. But the bridge’s 26-foot opening proved too narrow for ever-wider ships, making it obsolete just 32 years later. So ferry service was re-established. An undated photo of the ferry, looking across the river to Vienna, is available on the Vienna Heritage Society Facebook site.
Ferry service continued until 1931, when a two-lane concrete bridge was erected upriver. In the 1990s, this bridge was replaced with the current four-lane high-rise bridge. With the re-routing of automobile traffic onto Highway 50, the landing at the end of Race Street fell quiet.
The ferry tollhouse was moved up the hill and even served as the town hall for a time. The road no longer continued over the water. What had been a throughway became a dead end.
Many years later, in a quieter Vienna, an elderly woman who lived on Race Street disappeared. When she vanished, the community searched. Days passed. Then weeks. Her car was eventually found in the river near the boat ramp. The discovery answered little.
Theories drifted like silt, but certainty never surfaced. Perhaps she had been preparing to move away to be with family, and had become disoriented or lost control of her vehicle. Perhaps she had come to the river precisely because she could not bear to leave this quaint village that had become her home.
Standing at the boat ramp, I kept thinking about the decisions once made at this threshold: whether to continue across the river by ferry or bridge, whether to go up or down the river by boat, whether to turn back or simply stay put. This shoreline has always been a point of choice – though never in exactly the same place.
The ferry landing wandered up and down the bank over the centuries, adjusting to currents and the needs of the inhabitants. The bridges rose and fell with the demands of commerce. Even the tollhouse moved, lifted from its original spot and carried inland like a relic that refused to disappear.
Vienna is preparing to celebrate its 320th year, and places like this remind us how much the town has weathered. Roads have shifted, the river has reshaped its edges, and the community has adapted each time. The town may seem quiet, but it’s not empty.
It holds the memory of crossings – Indigenous, colonial, modern – and the stories of those who stood on this threshold before us. And there are new stories unfolding every day that have yet to be told.
