J.C. Lore and Sons Oyster House, Solomons Island

For nearly a century, the Lore family packed and shipped the harvest of the Patuxent River from this very waterfront. Joseph Lore Senior started shipping seafood from Solomons Island in the late eighteen hundreds. By the early nineteen hundreds he had built a permanent packing house on this site, and three generations of the family carried on the trade into the late twentieth century.

Oysters, crabs, and fish moved out of here to markets across the region. The Chesapeake oyster industry was once one of the most productive seafood operations in the world, and small family packing houses like this one were its backbone. The building that stands here today dates from the early twentieth century and is among the last surviving examples of the working waterfront infrastructure that once lined the shores of the bay.

It is now preserved as part of the Calvert Marine Museum's collection on the history of the Patuxent River fishery.