Steamboat Days on the Chesapeake: Betterton and Tolchester BeachHardcover, 25 September 2009

Over 300 postcards and engaging text present Maryland's beach resorts of yesteryear. Before the completion of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and improved highways, the Chesapeake Bay was dotted with many beach resorts. By the 1890s, the two most popular beaches in Maryland were Betterton and Tolchester Beach. It was a time when going to the beach meant an excursion boat ride across the bay. Betterton's heyday was from the 1890s to the 1940s, when Betterton's Victorian wooden hotels were booked solid and served home cooked meals all summer. From its beginnings as a small picnic ground in the 1870s, Tolchester Beach grew to become the Chesapeake Bay's biggest and best-known amusement park and bathing beach until 1962. This book is a must read for beach lovers, historians, and postcard collectors alike.