Little survives from Oxford’s early dominance as a port town from the 1660s through the 1760s, when it was second only to Annapolis and the designated port of entry on the Eastern Shore. The still-active ferry from Oxford to Bellevue across the Tred Avon River is thought to be the first in the country, established by Talbot County in 1683. It is located near the intersection of Morris Street and The Strand, which featured an assortment of frame residential and small-scale commercial buildings arranged on the grid recorded in a 1707 survey. A 1976 reconstruction of the seventeenth-century Oxford Custom House near the town wharf was a Bicentennial project celebrating this early history. This project coincided with the establishment of a Historic District Commission for Oxford. Despite being eclipsed in the mid-eighteenth century by ports such as Chestertown and Baltimore, Oxford continued to prosper. The arrival of the Maryland and Delaware Railroad in 1871 (after 1877 known as Delaware and Chesapeake) expanded the town and its economic base, with many residents employed in shipbuilding or over a dozen oyster-packing houses.
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