Mathews County, Virginia, is now the home of the National Park Service’s newest Chesapeake Gateways site—elevating an important piece of wharf history and modern-day water recreation hub.
The five-acre Williams Wharf property on the East River is a historical landing going back 400 years in American history. The site was utilized as a port-of-call in the colonial transatlantic tobacco trade; frequented by steamboats out of Baltimore and Norfolk during the steamboat era; and a commercial fishing hub in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mathews County has a strong seafaring heritage of wooden boatbuilding, commercial fishing and men who served in the United States Merchant Marines.
Williams Wharf Landing’s docks was also a key filming spot for the 2019 film Harriet. Cynthia Erivo, a megastar for her work in Wicked, played abolotionist Harriet Tubman. Williams Wharf stood in for 19th-century Philadelphia with Yorktown’s Schooner Alliance docked nearby.
As a Chesapeake Gateways site, the landing joins over 200 other locations in the Bay region for the public to enjoy while learning about Chesapeake Bay history. The National Park Service uses the sites to encourage protection of the Bay watershed and to offer entry points for visitors to the region…