Throughout its history, Snow Hill, located alongside the Pocomoke River that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, has enjoyed a relative prosperity manifested in its architectural cityscape. First recognized by Native Americans for its wealth of natural resources, the town site drew English settlers as early as the 1640s. When the Maryland Assembly passed the Act for the Advancement of Trade in 1683 to establish five new towns in the region, Snow Hill’s advantageous location earned it a place. It thrived as a shipping port for goods extending trade to the Eastern Seaboard and the West Indies, prompting its designation as county seat in 1742. The town was named for a district in London, the site of a major water conduit.
The late-nineteenth-century decline in the Eastern Shore’s maritime trade, as other modes of transport took its place, only provided new opportunities for Snow Hill when the railroad arrived in 1870. It was then that such industries as lumber and food processing opened along the banks of the Pocomoke River. Although those too have now gone, Snow Hill maintains integrity and vibrancy.
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