NOVEMBER 2005

A Pearl of a Place

Famed for its oyster festival, Urbanna, Va., is slowly growing out of its small-town shell.

By Donna Rich
Photography By Edwin Remsberg

Urbanna As route 227 converges into the Urbanna Creek bridge, gold cornstalks transform into a world of blue water and white sails. It’s a fine way to enter Urbanna, the tiny harbor community at the end of Virginia’s Middle Peninsula.

“Urban” is not the first word that comes to mind in this tranquil place, where family-owned hardware stores and drugstores line the tiny streets. And if you’ve ever heard of it before, it’s probably because of the Urbanna Oyster Festival, [Nov. 4-5] when thousands of festival-goers descend on the town of 550. It’s been a rousing success since it began in 1958. “It’s wild and crazy,” says Pam Simon, festival director, about the November weekend when “our little sleepy town beckons some 80,000 people—all of them hungry for oysters.”

But all year long, this half-square-mile town, established in 1680, is a quiet boaters’ dream. Rivers not roads form the boundaries of the town, with its namesake creek, Perkin’s Creek, Jamison’s Cove, and the broad waters of the Rappahannock River. The Chesapeake Bay is only a gull’s cry away.

Urbanna I find the soul of Urbanna down the walkable few blocks of Cross Street, where small-town life lives on. Regulars vie with tourists along the chrome and orange stools aligned in a “W” formation at the throwback lunch counter of Marshall’s Drugstore. Though the hand-squeezed limeades and lemonades are popular, waitress Sarah White (too young to realize what a dinosaur this place is) notes that “everyone says we make good milkshakes.”

Adding to the Mayberry-esque mood is the handmade sign on Taylor Hardware and Furniture Company, which announces that Douglas Taylor, grandson of the man who opened the store in 1939, will be back soon. The old-fashioned hardware emporium is a far cry from cavernous chain home repair stores, but no one here seems to mind.

But nowhere does the past cohabitate with the present like on the sloped wooden floors of R.S. Bristow Store, a landmark since 1876, when it was a general store filled with merchandise brought in from Baltimore on steamboats. The small store’s historic credo “Home of Good Goods"—boasted about on aprons and T-shirts sold there—still applies with fashionable clothing (for men and women) and modern housewares presented in the original glass and wood display cases.

Urbanna Neighbor knows neighbor here, and anything that might threaten this closeness gets the attention of locals who savor this thriving piece of Americana. The “Keep Middlesex County Rural” signs posted on several front lawns signal recent concerns. The historic Rosegill Plantation, located just outside the southern gateway of town, was recently rezoned to allow 700 homes to be built on its 848-acre tract.

“We’re rural, “says Doug Taylor, born and raised here. “I hate to see that change.”

Town administrator Lewis Filling, sixty, feels the town will weather the influx of people, especially since he believes the growth will be gradual. “Urbanna has been here since 1680, and it has survived many things people said would kill it,” he says. “People die, but this town survives.”

Urbanna A simple walking tour is the best way to see Urbanna, with its beautiful blend of colonial and Victorian period buildings, including the Marble House, a Queen Anne-style private home, built by a schooner captain whose family owned an oyster house. It derives its name from the marble carried here on steamboats to lavishly adorn local homes.

The center of town, mainly the intersecting avenues of Virginia and Cross streets, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a mix of residences, businesses, and shops. On a small bluff in view of Urbanna Creek at the end of Virginia Street, I find the Old Tobacco Warehouse built in 1766, one of the oldest serving mercantile structures in America associated with the cash crop. The handsome brick building, with an expansive front porch crying out for a couple of rocking chairs, has just been meticulously restored as a visitors’ center. It’s a nod to the origins of the town: Its fifty acres were purchased for 10,000 pounds of tobacco.

Urbanna is one of the original tobacco ports; twenty such sites were designated for shipping the crop, the currency of the colonies used in exchange for purchasing European goods. Laid out in 1681, the town received its royal moniker Urbanna—City of Anne—in 1704 to honor the reigning monarch. It became a bustling port of call for steamboats and commercial vessels from Baltimore and Norfolk until about 1930. Now pleasure boats bob lazily on the town tides, sharing space with the occasional workboat.

Urbanna In-town accommodations are slim, but luckily there’s the newly opened Inn at Urbanna Creek B&B, which provides a bed-and-way-beyond-breakfast experience. Suzanne Corwell Chewning and her husband, Lee, owned and operated one, then later two, popular upscale restaurants in Folly Beach, S.C. Lee now uses his culinary talents to cook unique gourmet breakfasts while the couple also warmly wine and dine guests who request special parties at the large four-guestroom 1870s home. I snooze peacefully in the pampered comforts of the B&B’s petite cottage set amidst the gardens, before setting out to explore once again.

Soothing too is the scene from the narrow deck of the Urbanna Boathouse Café, where there’s live music nightly. The enticing nautical view is also enjoyed inside, thanks to its large glassed front. But it’s the unique stone waterfalls and water “curtains” that steal the show. Highly recommended is the appetizer Boathouse Nachos, kicked up a notch with lobster bisque drizzle and crabmeat, a meal in itself.

Refueled, I’m ready to get serious about shopping; there’s no end to the fun with the variety of stores on Virginia Street.

Plenty of non-mall shopping experience has taught me that, if you see a purple door, open it—and I do at Cyndy’s Bynn, with happy results. The handcrafted feather boa-topped poodle purse is one of the many don’t-need-it-but-so-want-it offerings, along with the colorful mirrored pet bowl, perfect for my girlie dog at home.

Papeterie is a shop that could get this diehard e-mailer to take pen to paper with its extensive selection of fancy to funky stationery. Exquisite mosaic tables topped with shards of antique Limoges, at $1,500, are complemented by quirky wooden signs like “Life Shucks in Urbanna.”

Urbanna Antiquers should look just around the corner from the main shopping corridor, to the spacious Urbanna Antique Mall on Rappahannock Avenue. It’s ripe for discovery, with such unique items as a Victorian sofa with a rich brown wicker “spider web” design ($995) and a tin cream separator selling for $75—luckily, there’s a home decorating suggestion taped on: “Think plant stand.”

Down the other end of Virginia Street, “Moo” Dodd and husband J.D. Dodd, owners of Moo’s River’s Edge Eatery, serve up crab cakes, as well as foot-long hot dogs, subs, plus the best finishers: six different ingenious “Walk Away Sundaes.” The Almond Joy was a winner, prepared in a waffle cone so you can walk or drive away, and still eat it.

That’s what I do heading down once more to Urbanna Creek, where the local celebrities await. Senior sisters Catherine Via and Beatrice Taylor are the waterwomen who took over Paynes Crab House and crabbing business after their father died in 1977. Since then, they’ve been spotlighted in more magazines than they can remember. “Guess ‘cuz we’re the only women who will do this,” is the way Catherine Via explains their fame.

Beatrice Taylor, now in her sixties, still pulls her own pots, baiting female crabs with a live jimmy or male “lure” that they sometimes like to name after hunks like Tom Selleck, one of her favorite actors.

Seventy-something Catherine takes time from her task at hand—sorting, cleaning, and cooking the crabs to ship out (they also sell locally)—to talk. She’ll tell you straight out her opinion on the brand-new hotel, whose grounds abut their neat little gray crab shanty that houses their seafood business. “It’s wonderful, an asset to the town,” she says. “Reason we’re still here is because of them; they own the land we’re on.”

The owners of that land and the new hotel are Jim and Bonnie Vautrot, the kind of come-heres locals would like to clone. They saved the old granary site, the same location where the long gone Hurley Hotel once stood, from condo development. Studying old photos of the Hurley, they designed a double veranda motel with green striped awnings sympathetic in style with the 1940s hotel with its envious views of Urbanna Creek.

After a four-year effort, Liberty at Compass Quay will open in time for this year’s oyster festival and will operate year-round, with fifteen guest rooms (three of them suites), plus five retail shops, and an events room. Without one word of advertising, four weddings have already been booked. “Oldtimers tell me they can’t wait to come sit on the porch and watch the water go by,” says Bonnie with a smile.

Like her neighbors, she shares that simple “pitching in” sentiment that the best small towns run on. “People in a small town have to pull together to give the town what it needs,” explains Bonnie. “If you love the people, you share your day-to-day life with then you can always find a way to contribute to your community.”

Donna Rich enjoys her small but growing hometown of Cape Charles on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Locals’ Guide to Urbanna

Beach It
A local boaters’ secret is the unofficial Urbanna flotilla, with anchorage along the mouth of Urbanna Creek at Rosegill, where a sandy little beach offers space to chill out.

Life After Dark
Come nightfall, the small town might roll up its sidewalks, but Cafe Mojo keeps jammin’. Eclectic live music and dazzling gourmet cuisine is served up until 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. 230 Virginia St. 804-758-4141.

Your Boat Won’t Be Lonely
There are plenty of places to float your boat in comfort. The new Urbanna Town Marina at Upton’s Point was just completed at 210 Oyster Rd. Contact town hall at 804-758-2613 or . Dozier’s Port Urbanna Marina: 25 Cross St., 804-758-0000; Urbanna Yachting Center: 1 Watling St., 804-758-2331.

Into the Mystic
“Energy transmitting” crystals and gemstones sparkle in one corner while an aroma lamp fills the air with a calming scent. And upstairs in the oldest surviving house in town, a third-generation astrologer can read your charts. Katybugs is not so much a store as an experience that can bring out the New Age in any body. There is also a full line of tantalizing teas, body oils, and people and pet aromatherapy. 290 Virginia St,. 804-758-8880 or http://www.katybugs.com.