More on Reedville

To catch back up, we left St. Michaels and ran pretty hard to get as far south as we could by around 5:00 PM. (Happy Hour) That turned out to be Reedville. We had read about the marina in Active Captain and it sounded like a nice place. Though the reviews did mention a fishy smell.




Well, on this 102º afternoon, with no breeze at all, it did smell fishy... really fishy. We wondered how the locals deal with the odor and were told, "you don't notice after a while, sometimes it's worse than others".
Hate to smell sometimes...

But it's an old historic fishing village and the locals are proud of it. So, more power to them.

Leftover from the heyday

The good folks of Reedville are now campaigning to SAVE THE STACK

A bit of history —

Reedville was named for Captain Elijah W. Reed (1827-1888). In 1874, Reed, a sea captain from Maine, came south to the Chesapeake Bay and recognized the potential of the menhaden fishing industry. In what became New England, as early as the 1620s, the Native Americans had taught the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts the value of burying menhaden in each hill of corn for fertilizer.
Captain Reed moved his business from Brooklin, Maine to the Northern Neck, and brought to the established community of watermen a method of extracting large quantities of oil from the fish by rendering them by the millions. Their oil was used as a lubricant and in lighting, as whale oil was, and the leftover bones and carcasses were valuable as fertilizer. He opened the first processing plant. By 1885, Reedville was heavily engaged in the menhaden fishing industry. Menhaden factories on Cockrell Creek produced fish oil, meal and fertilizer from menhaden. The menhaden fishing industry brought tremendous wealth to Reedville and to Northumberland County. Reedville, a town of approximately 500, was once known as the wealthiest town in the United States due to the large sums of money produced by the menhaden industry. ^{[needs citation]}
Fishing boat captains and factory owners and who made their fortunes from menhaden built homes along what is now Main Street.
Years ago, dozens of fish processing factories, most recently Omega Protein Corporation (successor to Zapata Haynie, Reedville Oil and Guano Company and Haynie Products Company) and Standard Products Company, dotted the Northumberland coastline near Reedville and adjacent fishing communities.

Anyway... So that's Reedville, we did like it but... the smell was a bit overwhelming. Kinda like Mel's Dad said many times about the smell of paper mills, "Smells like money".
If that's the case the place must be filthy rich.

Now for a few days we are renting a car and checking out the York River area. Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. All very historic and should be interesting.

Until later.

Adios,

Istaboa


PS... saw this and couldn't resist.