Local Area Info: Betterton, Maryland

Betterton is located at the mouth of the Sassafras River on the upper Chesapeake Bay in Kent County, Maryland, United States. The GPS coordinates are 39°22?4?N 76°3?39?W? / ?39.36778°N 76.06083°W? / 39.36778; -76.06083 (39.367863, -76.060877).

The Betterton Historic District consists of a collection of vernacular Victorian resort structures. The district includes many of the homes, hotels and cottages built to accommodate steamboat passengers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Notable buildings within the district include the hotels and boarding homes which catered to the steamboat passengers, several churches, and summer cottages, dating from the golden age of the passenger steamboats on the Chesapeake Bay.

The recorded history of Betterton dates back to the Seventeenth century. The Fishall Patent was granted in 1664, later becoming known as Fish Hall. The house located at 104 Ericsson Avenue contains foundation bricks dating back to 1698. In 1715 Edward Crew leased Fish Hall and the name was changed to Crews Landing. For the next 100 years Crews Landing was a small fishing village and then later a port for the waterborne transport of local farm produce to urban markets. In 1851, Richard Townsend Turner (a Quaker) named the town “Betterton” after the family of his wife Elizabeth Betterton. The Turner pier, and later the Ericsson pier, provided access to the town for the shipping trade. Eventually townspeople rented out rooms to the travelers, salesmen, and shippers attracted to the beach. Mr. Turner built the Rigbie Hotel (demolished in August 1986) and Mr. Crownhart built the Belmont Hotel (destroyed by fire in 1956). These were joined by such lodging establishments as the Betterton, the Chesapeake, the Country Cousin, the Southern, and many others. Boat traffic from Baltimore and Philadelphia on the Ericsson Line (and others) brought the visitors and vacationers. The Ericsson line was named after John Ericsson, the inventor of the "screw propeller". It was this invention that allowed steamboats to be built with narrow enough beam to allow them to traverse the recently opened Chesapeake and Delaware Canal then only 25 feet wide. Betterton was an easy and natural stop for boats using the canal and the explosion in steamboat traffic brought growth and prosperity to Betterton. For some time before the turn of the Twentieth century, there were 11 scheduled steamboat landings daily at Betterton's piers. The boom period for Betterton is generally thought to be from 1918 to 1930, when restaurants, taverns, dance halls, bowling alleys, and amusement arcades all helped create the town's resort image.