Dover Bridge soars over the Choptank River between Easton and Bethlehem. Driving over the bridge, which carries Dover Road east into Caroline County and the heart of Delmarva, it’s tough not to slow a little. The views of the marshes, the lazy river and the surrounding fields and forests pull at the eyes. Especially this time of the summer when Jezebel-like mallows, flaunting their floppy white flowers splashed with seductive pools of red, spread across the marshy flats.
Some, like me, would think that Dover Road and Dover Bridge have something to do with an old highway meandering its way across the middle of the Delmarva Peninsula between Easton and Delaware’s capital city of Dover. But we would be wrong.
There is, however, a governmental link.
According to information gleaned from the Choptank River Heritage organization, Dover Road and Dover Bridge relate to a riverside town that disappeared after the Revolutionary War, in the late 1700s.
Here’s what the Choptank River Heritage organization says about Talbot County’s short-lived town of Dover:
“Dover was located on the west or Talbot County side of the Choptank River about four miles east of Easton and about one mile below the Dover Bridge. In 1748 Anthony Bacon, a London merchant who operated ships which traded on the Choptank River, and James Dickinson operated what was referred to as ‘a great store at Dover on Choptank.’ Several warehouses and wharves apparently were built here to accommodate the lucrative tobacco trade.
“Sailing ships would lie at the wharves in the Choptank’s fresh water to kill the barnacles and worms on their hulls (see also Barkers Landing). Dover became the county seat of Talbot County in 1778 and authorized the building of a courthouse, but due to the war nothing was done. Easton eventually ‘won’ the rights for the courthouse and became the county seat in 1786. Soon thereafter, the town of Dover died.”
So much for Maryland’s Dover.
Ferries operated in that area starting in the mid-1700s, followed by the first bridge in the mid-1800s. Up until 1935 when the Route 50 bridge was built at Cambridge, Dover Bridge was the first bridge over the Choptank above Chesapeake Bay. The river narrows dramatically there making it a natural crossing for ferries and bridges.
In 2018, the current fixed bridge at the Dover Road crossing opened, replacing the 86-year-old swing bridge in service since 1932. The new bridge carries more than 16,000 vehicles over the Choptank on a daily basis.
From a technical standpoint, Dover Road identifies the section of Maryland Route 331 from Route 50 at Easton to the Dover Bridge. Picturesque Route 331 begins at Easton and ends at Vienna where another soaring bridge crosses the Nanticoke River.
For centuries, the Choptank River crossing at Dover Bridge has provided a vital transportation link between the heartland of Delmarva and Talbot County’s Chesapeake communities.
Dennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County.
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