The Shrinking Island

Glaciers, storms, tides, and winds have continually created and destroyed islands and shorelines throughout the Chesapeake Bay region. According to Maryland settler and Jesuit missionary Father Andrew White, St. Clement's Island was 400 acres in 1634, but today Global Positioning System measurements show that erosion has reduced it to 62 acres. During the 1920s, the federal government used layers of large stones called riprap to control erosion near the Blackistone Island Lighthouse, and fifty years later, through the efforts of the St. Mary's Historical Society and the State of Maryland, riprap came to surround the entire island. The Maryland Park Service continues trying to slow erosion by allowing vegetation to grow and by limiting recreational use of the island. During Hurricane Isabel in 2003, Potomac waters forced a wall of riprap to collapse and washed away part of the island's bank. Scores of hurricanes have shaped Chesapeake Bay islands and beaches for more than 10,000 years, and a survey map last revised by the military in 1920 shows that the island had changed shape and decreased in size since the 1883 survey.

Maryland · United States