Elk Landing

Near the head of the Elk River, just outside what is now Elkton, Maryland, Swedish and Finnish settlers established one of the earliest trading posts in the region in the sixteen hundreds. They called the place Transtown. By the mid-seventeen hundreds it had grown into a colonial port, and a stone house built on the site in seventeen fifty still stands.

Tobacco dominated cultivation in the surrounding area and was shipped from warehouses here to England and the Caribbean. By the seventeen fifties the soil was becoming depleted, and the region shifted to grain and flour. The town that grew around the landing, known as Head of Elk, became strategically important during the Revolutionary War, serving as a transit point for British troops in seventeen seventy-seven when Howe's army landed nearby on its way to capture Philadelphia. Today the site operates as a living-history museum along the Elk River.