The first steamboat built in Baltimore—aptly called the Chesapeake—was completed in 1813. Its launching heralded the arrival of steam-powered vessels on the Chesapeake Bay, the East Coast's largest estuary. By 1817 the Eagle and the Virginia were making regularly scheduled runs between Norfolk and Baltimore, and soon steamboat wharfs dotted the Bay's western and eastern shores. During the "Golden Age of the Steamboat" (1880 through the mid-1930s), between seventy-five and one-hundred vessels plied the Bay and its tributaries.

Steamboats were important to the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula, providing an economic anchor and lifeline for most of the inhabitants of our region. Norfolk and, more predominately, Baltimore acted as gateways to the larger world beyond. The cities provided the markets, the towns provided the goods, and the steamboats provided the means to both.

The Steamboat Era Museum is a memorial to a romantic and entrepreneurial time that helped broaden our horizons and shape our world. As we say in our motto: "We are who we are because steamboats were."

Richard Wilson III, President
Anne Long McClintock, Vice President
John O'Shaughnessy, Treasurer
Jacqueline Burrell, Recording Secretary
Alexander McD. Fleet, Ex-Officio
Jimmie Lee Crockett, President Emeritus