Common property mapping and the preservation of traditional rights in Chesapeake Bay's oyster fishery, 1892–1914

Abstract

Conflicts over oysters intensified along the US mid-Atlantic coast as traditional management of these valuable resources broke down in the late nineteenth century. In response, states founded management agencies, and mapping oysters was one of their first activities. Virginia and Maryland's first cartographers favored privatizing common property, an alteration that would have displaced thousands of oystermen and benefited wealthier segments of the industry. Cartographers sought to use maps to expand privatization; however, Chesapeake Bay oystermen were numerous enough to wield political influence, and they rejected one of the first major surveys and shaped the production of the other two, using them to protect their common property while making these rights visible to the State. Many conservation practices in the eastern USA grew out of local people's traditions, and this study explores the role of the mapping process amid the broader context of a shift in the scale of management to state agencies.

Keywords:

• cartography
• common property
• local knowledge
• oysters
• Chesapeake Bay

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Bonnie McCay, Thomas Rudel, David Hughes, Kevin St. Martin, Phaedra Daipha, Teresa Johnson, the editors of the Journal of Cultural Geography, and three anonymous reviewers for comments on this paper, as well as library staff at Mystic Seaport Museum, University of Maryland's Special Collections, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Central Library for assistance obtaining and reproducing maps.

Notes

1. Estimates of value and employment in early USFC documents are imprecise, but they are the best measurements available. The USFC's first nationwide survey (Goode 1887) estimated that the 1880 oyster harvest was worth over $13.4 million, compared to $29.3 million for all other fisheries combined, including whales and seals. The USFC also estimated that there were approximately 101,000 fulltime fishermen in 1880, and that Maryland and Virginia alone contained 16,000 and 15,000 fulltime oystermen, respectively. The USFC produced five volumes in this first survey: one each on the Atlantic, Pacific, Great Lakes, Gulf Coast, and oyster fisheries. These high numbers were partly the produce of over-harvesting; oyster production peaked around 1890 at an unsustainable level of approximately 115 million pounds annually (MacKenzie 1996).