WHITEHAVEN HOTEL

Once a busy port on the Wicomico River, Whitehaven is now a quiet residential village of primarily late-nineteenth-century houses. The ferry here was established in 1688 and still transports patrons the short distance across the Wicomico. The only remaining commercial establishment in town is the Whitehaven Hotel located next to the ferry landing. An early-eighteenth-century hall-and-parlor house is encased within the late-nineteenth-century expansion with a mansard roof providing additional lodging space. The shift to automobile travel and dredging the river up to Salisbury ended Whitehaven’s heyday, and the hotel closed in the 1940s. After years as a private residence, the hotel was restored in the 1990s and is now a bed-and-breakfast. Although the cannery and other commercial structures in Whitehaven are gone, other landmarks include the Whitehaven Schoolhouse (c. 1886; 1908; 100 Church Street) and Whitehaven United Methodist Church (1892; 108 Church), as well as the late-nineteenth-century houses along River Street.