In the late winter of 1972, famed developer James Rouse began drafting a plan for one of the boldest, most innovative housing developments in the history of post WWII America. In his quest for “the improvement of mankind,” Rouse decided that his next project, coming shortly after his highly lauded Columbia, Maryland development made headline news, was to be located close to his boyhood home in Easton—the diminutive Wye Island.
Boyd Gibbons
His vision for Wye called for a modern community that would create high population density and low environmental impact housing for up to 40,000 residents while protecting its pristine shoreline. With families living on less than 12% of the land mass, the waterfront would suffer no net loss of habitat for wildlife, and at the same time provide a non-intrusive option to a county that was already destined for significant growth with the Bay Bridge fully in use.
Very few on the Eastern Shore, Rouse among them, could have anticipated that his Wye Island plans would lead to one of the most legendary and contentious battles in the history of land conservation in the United States.
This epic tale was the subject of author Boyd Gibbons’s celebrated 1977 account Wye Island: Outsiders, Insiders, and Resistance to Change. And now, almost forty years since Rouse started his plans for Wye Island, Gibbons is returning to the Eastern Shore to participate in a conversation about the battle for Wye Island with Lynn Scarlett, Visiting Scholar at Resources for the Future and former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“Though Gibbons recounts a tale at Wye Island that unfolded over 3 decades ago, its insights about people and their passions for “place” that give rise to conservation remain acutely relevant in today’s urbanizing world.”
On Sunday November 4th, The Aspen Institute, The Chestertown Spy, and the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy will be hosting a conversation and forum on the battle for Wye Island with Boyd Gibbons, author of the acclaimed Wye Island historical account.
Other forum panel members include Rob Etgen, Executive Director of Eastern Shore Land Conservancy; Ted Rouse, President of Healthy Planet and son of James Rouse; John Wilson, Queen Anne’s County Developer; and Robin Wood, Queen Anne’s County Planning office.
The event is open to public but seating is limited. A reception hosted by Aspen Institute will follow Reservations are available at https://www.eslc.org/event-registration/?ee=6 or email [email protected] or 410.827.9756,
The Battle for Wye Island
Sunday November 4th
2PM to 4 PM
Wye Conference Center
Wye Woods, MD
Ken Noble says
This sounds like a very good event. I may get off of the farm and go to town for it even. I got an “A+” and “Outstanding Work” for a graduate school paper that I wrote in 1987 called “Revisiting Wye Island”. The class was “Land Use Law” at the University of Wisconsin, School of Architecture and Urban Planning. At the time, Maryland was in the enabling stages of the Critical Areas Law. My paper discussed how the Wye Island project may have been treated under the Critical Areas Law. To whit, Talbot County may have included the immediate area of the proposed town as Critical Area-Residential/Commercial.
It is perhaps too bad that they did not. Yes, Wye Island is fairly pristine…but, stop look around again. The large lot Agricultural Zoning on the land that the State of Maryland did NOT gain in special legislative session is replete with 20,000 square foot castles. That is fine for the one percenters living there (or is that 53%…?), but we COULD have had a a state of the art town with state of the art engineering complete;u intune with the Chesapeake Bay. Would I do that today? No. We now know that Wye Island will be largely under water in 100 years. But we do have locations that can be rebuilt WITH DENSITY and transit connections to jobs in the Baltimore/Washington/Annapolis area as well as toward Wilmington/Newark/Philly. Locations along historic rail lines and Route 301 come to mind. Ever stop in Price for more than a minute? Very close to either metropolitan node, I’d say. Ripe for a town of 5,000.
Afraid of growth through density? Fine. Keep your heads in the sand and REAL sprawl will eventually surround you. (Correction…at our economic pace here, it will surround your grandchildren….without density allowances.)