The Chesapeake City Basin

The Basin: James Adams’ Home and Borger’s Wharf

Here’s a southeast view of the Chesapeake City Basin around 1940. At present (2015), it’s the site of the Chesapeake Inn. The area at right, just out of view, was Borger’s Wharf, where I docked my small boat. Sometime in the seventies the restaurant known as Dockside was established on the site. The owner was Franz Kappel, former owner of the Chesapeake Boat Company. At left is Mount Nebo, where James Adams build his house. Adams was the owner of the Showboat, also known as the Floating Theater. Notice how different the Basin was in the early forties. Walter Cooling told me that, before the Corps of Engineers widened and deepened the area, it was mostly marshland, with a stream (Back Creek) meandering through.