TOLCHESTER -- When she was growing up, Trisha Sawicki played in the Chesapeake Bay just a short stroll from the summer cottage that her grandfather built in this once-popular bayfront resort.
"I used to be able to walk out my door and down the lane and have a beautiful beach to swim on," said Sawicki, 45, who moved here seven years ago. "But now I don't have that."
Nature -- and the desire of waterfront property owners to keep the Chesapeake at bay -- have combined to wipe out most of the beach that once graced Tolchester Estates, a 71-year-old community built atop a bluff overlooking the shoreline.
Where once there was a broad, sandy strip at the edge of the water, now are layers of boulders and wooden bulkheads keeping the 50-foot bluff -- and the homes atop it -- from tumbling into the bay in storm-caused erosion.
Some residents are feuding over access to the remaining scraps of beach. Two relatively recent purchasers of summer homes have angered some longtime residents by filing deeds claiming sole ownership of the shoreline in front of their homes and of the lanes that run past their houses to the waterfront.
The dispute has degenerated in one instance into a "Jerry Springer"-like spat between neighbors, with dueling lawsuits over who owns the contested water access, but also including allegations of shrubbery vandalism and threatening with a garden hose.
"It's just a mess, sort of a quagmire," laments Tracy Stone, co-owner of the Inn at Mitchell House, a nearby bed and breakfast. "It's an unfortunate set of circumstances where things have changed and people are angry with each other."
The dispute over dwindling beach access at Tolchester is no surprise to James G. Titus of the Environmental Protection Agency, an expert on climate change and sea-level rise. Marylanders are losing their ability to get to the bay as they barricade their waterfront against erosion, he said.
"Ultimately that shorefront is owned by all of the residents of Maryland," Titus said. But this state has done less than others, he contends, to ensure the public's continued right to access to the bay.
Tolchester Beach was once a thriving bay resort. From the late 19th century until shortly after World War II, steamers brought thousands of tourists from Baltimore to ride the "Whirl-Pool Dips" roller coaster, bathe on the sandy beach, or dance in the pavilion.
Tolchester Estates was launched in the 1920s, in hopes of cashing in on the nearby amusement park and on speculation that regular ferry service connecting Kent County with Baltimore might be instituted.
The ferry never materialized, nor did a talked-of bridge over the bay at Tolchester. The amusement park closed in 1962, seven years after the Bay Bridge crossing at Kent Island eased the drive to Ocean City. No trace of the park remains; a marina occupies the site where steamers once docked.
Bypassed by progress, Tolchester Estates languished for decades. In recent years, though, a new generation of vacation-home seekers has begun buying and renovating the old cottages.
To some longtime residents, the influx represents a threat to their way of life. Tolchester, the scene of fighting between British and American soldiers in the War of 1812, "is under attack, and this time the attack is from within," Carol Bromer of Marietta, Pa., wrote this summer in a letter to the weekly Kent County News.
Bromer, whose family has had a summer cottage here for four generations, is particularly upset by the recent actions of another Pennsylvania family, which at great expense shored up its property on the southern end of the community beach with a layer of boulders, armoring the base of the bluff against waves. Residents now must climb over this rocky revetment to reach the beach or trek around to the north end, which is still accessible by a dirt road.
"Community property is being attacked by some recent arrivals who are unable to grasp the concept of community property," Bromer wrote.
The Tolchester Community Association has waded into the fray. The group, of which Sawicki is secretary, is suing one property owner for claiming to own supposed community property and may go after the other, depending on the result of the pending case.
What's at stake, according to Sawicki, is the right of any resident of the traditionally working-class summer and retirement community to enjoy the bay -- rights that were provided for by the developer when he laid out the subdivision in the 1920s.
The people with waterfront homes "have a lot of money, and they don't want anybody coming up there," she said. "To me, if you want to save the bay, you have to have people care about it. You have to be able to go to the bay and see it to love it and want to care for it."
But others say the issue is not nearly so clear cut, that newcomers are being unfairly maligned.
"I've never, ever, since we owned this property, stopped anyone from walking through," said Wilbur A. Tice of Mount Joy, Pa., whose revetment angers Bromer and Sawicki. "My wife goes out and cleans up the community roads," he said. "We clean up the beach. We couldn't be nicer neighbors."
When Tolchester Estates was originally subdivided, the beach and bluff overlooking it were retained by the developer. Also kept as community property were a series of 60-foot-wide grassy strips leading to the bay that were to be lanes giving inland lot owners access to the water.
Over the decades, though, some waterfront owners have bought or been given title to land in front of their homes, as well as to the lanes. Some, with or without legal ownership, have planted trees, paved parking pads and even erected fences in the lanes.
Signs saying "Private lane -- property owners only" mark the entrance to a few gravel roads. Sawicki says the drives actually belong to the community association -- and hence to all members of the community, not just the waterfront landowners.
The newcomers -- Tice, who sells medical implants, and a Washington physician -- have filed "confirmatory" deeds in the county courthouse in Chestertown claiming to own the shoreline in front of their homes and the lanes that lead to the shore.
The Washingtonian, Dr. Saul M. Levin, has been sued by his neighbor, Barbara Kaehler, over his claim to own the shoreline and part of grassy Kansas Avenue, which runs between their homes. The Tolchester Community Association has joined in, accusing Levin of trying to take community land.
"It's like deeding your neighbor's back yard to yourself," complained David C. Wright, a Chestertown lawyer representing Kaehler and the community association. "I have never in a million years seen anything like this."
Ironically, the dispute arose when the neighbors fell out over a joint project to armor their eroding shoreline. Wright says Levin barred others from using a gentle swale carved in the bluff to get to a tiny patch of sand, even though all had shared the $90,000 cost equally.
Kaehler accuses Levin in her suit of spraying her with a garden hose, threatening her with a garden tool and harassing her with floodlights and telephone calls. Levin, in turn, has counter-sued, accusing her and his other next-door neighbors -- the latter his former friends from Washington -- of trespassing, and of poisoning and ripping out his plants in the disputed territory. He also alleged in the suit that his neighbors have slandered him with anti-Semitic and anti-gay remarks, allegations that Kaehler's lawyer denies.
"It's a Hatfield-McCoy story," acknowledged lawyer Philip Hoon of Chestertown, who is representing both Levin and Tice. Levin did not return telephone calls, but Hoon contends that the community association is discriminating against Levin because it has allowed other property owners to acquire the community property by their homes and has tolerated other incursions.
"If they want to apply the rules, fine, apply them to everyone," the lawyer said.
The Tices have not been sued, but they were the unnamed targets of Bromer's complaining letter in the local weekly, she says.
Hoon says the Tices have an even clearer claim to the shoreline and lane than does Levin. The two pieces of community property were acquired in the 1950s by a previous owner of the Tices' summer home, the lawyer said.
Yet the Tice family name has been spray-painted off an Adopt-a-Road sign at the entrance to Tolchester Estates. Tice, 35, says some residents are wrongly portraying him as "that wealthy guy who owns the point and is taking away their access."
Nora Norman, whose mother lives next door to the Tices' summer home, says the Pennsylvania family's house has been vandalized but the owners have never objected to anyone walking past their door to the community beach.
Like other longtime residents, Norman fondly recalls discovering Colonial clay pipes and a foot-shaped rock while beachcombing here in her youth. She suggests some in the community are making scapegoats of the newcomers for changes beyond their control.
"Those remembered beaches are now under water," Norman wrote in her own letter to the county newspaper. "We can no longer relive yesterday's memories."
Pub Date: 8/19/99