Salisbury Discovery Guide
Why Visit Salisbury the Smart Way
Salisbury is the commercial centre of the Delmarva Peninsula and the practical base for Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
It has an unexpectedly good pair of free attractions: the Salisbury Zoo, small, free and focused on the Americas, and the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, which holds the definitive collection of decoy and decorative bird carving — a genuine American folk art that was developed on this shore by working watermen.
The Wicomico River runs through the middle of the town, with a riverwalk and a downtown that has spent a decade rebuilding itself around it.
And it is forty minutes from Assateague Island, with its wild ponies and undeveloped barrier beach, and half an hour from Ocean City.
How to Experience Salisbury
The Ward Museum
The Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, on a pond at the edge of town, holds the world’s largest collection of decorative and working bird carving, from nineteenth-century hunting decoys to contemporary competition pieces. It is named for the Ward brothers, barbers from nearby Crisfield who turned decoy making into an art form, and is far more interesting than it sounds.
The zoo
The Salisbury Zoo is free, compact and set in parkland along the river, concentrating on species of North and South America.
Downtown and the river
The riverwalk along the Wicomico River, the restored downtown blocks, the Saturday farmers’ market and the small galleries and breweries that have opened in the past decade.
Pemberton
A 1741 brick plantation house and a park of woods and trails on the river west of town.
Day trips
Assateague Island for the wild ponies and an undeveloped Atlantic beach; Ocean City for the boardwalk; and the watermen’s towns of Crisfield and Smith Island.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
Salisbury is an Eastern Shore town: rural, conservative, water-oriented and somewhat separate from the rest of Maryland.
The Shore
The Delmarva Peninsula is cut off from the rest of Maryland by the Chesapeake Bay, and until the bridge opened in 1952 the connection was by boat. That isolation produced a distinct identity — Eastern Shore people still speak of going across the bridge — and a distinctive accent that is closer to the Tidewater South than to Baltimore.
Chicken
The modern broiler industry began on this peninsula in the 1920s, and Salisbury is its headquarters. Poultry shapes the economy, the landscape of long low houses among the fields, and a good deal of the region’s politics.
The university
Salisbury University has around eight thousand students and gives the town a younger population and a cultural programme it would not otherwise have.
Watermen
Crabbing, oystering and fishing remain a living tradition on the bay side, with their own vocabulary, boats and seasons.
Responsible Travel Tips
Poultry is the region’s economy and its environmental problem. The Delmarva broiler industry, headquartered here, produces an enormous quantity of manure, and nutrient runoff into the Chesapeake watershed is a long-running and heavily regulated issue. It is worth understanding what the landscape of chicken houses you drive past actually represents.
On Assateague, the ponies are wild: feeding or touching them is illegal, dangerous and the cause of most injuries there. Keep the required distance, secure your food, and stay off the dunes.
The Chesapeake and its tributaries are recovering slowly; the rules on crabbing and oystering exist for a reason and are enforced.
Buy local: the downtown independents, the farmers’ market and the Eastern Shore seafood houses.
When to Visit Salisbury
May, June, September and October are the best months: warm, comfortable, with the beaches usable and the humidity manageable.
Late July brings the pony swim at Chincoteague, an hour south, which is the region’s best-known event.
July and August are hot, humid and mosquito-ridden, and the coast is at its busiest; Salisbury itself stays quieter than the beach towns.
April is the Ward World Championship carving competition, which brings carvers from across the world.
November to March is mild but grey and wet, with occasional snow; the coast is empty, which some people prefer, and the waterfowl are in.
September is the peak of hurricane season for this coast.
Travel Cost Levels in Salisbury
What a day costs, by how you travel
Relative cost across the city
Lowest — the highway motels and the inland villages
Average — downtown Salisbury and the university area
Highest — the coast in July and August, which is a different market altogether
Salisbury is inexpensive, and its main appeal as a base is precisely that: a room here in August costs a fraction of one at the beach half an hour away. Sales tax is added at the till and tipping of 18 to 20 per cent is expected.