The Eastport where Jean Herndon grew up was a close-knit community, a place where generations of black and white families lived side-by-side and earned their pay by shucking oysters and pulling crab pots from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

But within the past two decades, this traditionally blue-collar community has become chic to many white, upper-class professionals searching for prime waterfront property near boating and sailing facilities. With a robust economy in place and interest rates at an all-time low, the demand for property in Eastport has soared in the past two years, real estate agents say.

People want to move to Eastport so much that Realtors have been trying all sorts of tactics to find sellers.

"They come knocking on your door, they send you letters in the mail, they call you on the telephone," Herndon said. "They say, 'We have someone who's interested in your home. Are you ready to sell?' "

Driving through the neighborhood, Peg Wallace, a real estate agent who has lived and sold homes in Eastport for more than 40 years, can point out several two- and three-bedroom houses that sold for $25,000 to $50,000 a little more than 30 years ago. By the 1980s, those houses were fetching about $175,000, and within the past three months, two houses have sold for $350,000 each, Wallace said.

A house on Chesapeake Avenue sold recently for $250,000 six hours after the "For Sale" sign went up. These higher home prices are closing the gap between property value in Eastport and downtown Annapolis, where similar homes -- depending on the style and quality of preservation -- sell for $300,000 to $500,000, Wallace said.

"There's a wave of people wanting to buy, and whatever comes on the market has been popping off fairly quickly," said Wallace, who also is chairwoman of the Eastport Historical Committee. "It's a great place to live. It's a laid-back, more casual community with waterfront within two or three blocks of almost all homes."

Eastport grew from the vision of post-Civil War developers who built affordable homes near the water so laborers and watermen could live close to where they worked. In 1868, the developers -- who formed the Mutual Building Association -- built skinny homes on small lots on the peninsula between Spa and Back creeks.

For nearly a century, Eastport remained an independent community across Annapolis Harbor from the state capital. Although whites lived on the Spa Creek side and blacks on Back Creek, most longtime residents say everyone got along fine.

"In Eastport, there was a fruit bowl of people, and we didn't hate each other because of color," said Larry Griffin, 49, who grew up there. "When I crossed the bridge into Annapolis, that was the first time I was called a [racial epithet]. When I was a kid, one of my best friends was white."

In 1952, Eastport was annexed into Annapolis. Shortly after the gentrification of the city's downtown Historic District began, developers eyed property on the other side of the creek.

They built waterfront condominiums in Eastport in the 1970s, but the real estate boom didn't begin in earnest until the 1980s.

More people began looking at Eastport as an affordable neighborhood, an alternative to downtown Annapolis.

Now, the demand for Eastport property has outstripped supply, said Tom Quattlebaum, chief executive officer of the Anne Arundel Association of Realtors.

"Unemployment is very low, people are more confident in their jobs, interest rates have been low people have felt good about buying houses," said Quattlebaum, who noted a 19 percent increase in homes sold in Anne Arundel County last year -- the largest since the 1980s. "The whole market in this area right now is extremely hot, and people like to be near the waterfront."

Irony can be found in the invasion of the white yuppie set into neighborhoods on Back Creek, said Marita Carroll, 77, a retired elementary school teacher who has lived in Eastport almost all her life.

"We used to be told to get back down to Back Creek where you belong," Carroll said. "It was just our world. Now, although we have felt for a long time that this is where we belong, there is an effort being made by other people to get into Back Creek."

Many Back Creek properties have gone on the market recently because elderly owners have died.

"A lot of the older African-American folks are in their 80s, and generationally, their kids are not interested in living here," said Mike Miron, the Eastport Historical Committee's historian. "They've moved on to other places to live, and they see this as an opportunity to sell the real estate. It's going to be a loss to the character of this neighborhood."

The African-American community is trying to preserve its presence in the neighborhood for generations to come. The community has been encouraging young people to feel closely connected to the community in a variety of ways.

The congregation of Mount Zion United Methodist Church, which had been the African-American community's social, religious and recreational center since its founding in 1890, voted to do a full-scale renovation of the old building on Second Street near Back Creek, rather than move out.

"The new building was designed to provide for activities that would interest young people" and encourage them to feel involved in the community, said the Rev. Rufus Abernethy, pastor of Mount Zion United Methodist Church from 1962 until he retired in 1992. The renovation was completed before he retired.

Denise Johnson, 48, who has lived in Eastport since she was 10, said she has been trying to emphasize to her two teen-age children how important her family home on Chester Avenue is to her.

"I tell them, 'If anything happens to me, we don't have a great, big home but it's what our family built it up to be,' " Johnson said. "My daughter has said, 'Well, Mom, I'll keep the house, but I won't live here. I'll rent it.' "

Carroll has had better luck. She persuaded a young man not to sell his parents' home after both died.

"I told him that when he considered the efforts that had been made by his parents to have that home built, he should not even think about selling but should stay there as a tribute to them," Carroll said. "It's important for us to stay because we are a part of Eastport's history. And we've lived here long enough, and we have been a part of the community's development, and we're still making efforts to preserve the community, preserve its history."