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Festival Memories
Hear maritime music and stories, view videos, and see photos from the 2004 Smithsonian Folklife Festival Water Ways Program 
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Teacher Resources         
Visit Kids' Coast for maritime lesson plans, background information and fun stuff for kids
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Maritime Music from Folkways Recordings GO



 



Media Links:
View a photo slide show of marsh history images
Listen to Charles Petrocci talk about the origins of hunting clubs
Hear Lonnie Ray Sykes describe mornings in the marsh
Hear Grayson Chesser describe sink boxes
Hear Chatmon Bryant talk about hunting with duck blinds
Hunting and Trapping

The marshes, swamps, ponds, creeks, meadows, and forests of the Mid-Atlantic coastal region are the ideal home for a variety of wild animals, which have been hunted and trapped since the earliest human habitation. The pelts of beavers, muskrats, foxes, and otters were traded or sold. And animals as deer, muskrats, snapping turtles, and terrapin were important parts of people's diets.

Today, many hunters and trappers are still active throughout the region. Seasonal wild game forms the basis for competitions like the annual Muskrat Skinning Championship in Golden Hill, Maryland, and for community events like the Marshland Dinner in Port Penn, Delaware, that features snapping turtle soup. The recipe for the Port Penn soup is secret. When one writer asked for it, he joked, "They said if they told me they would have to kill me."

 


Marsh Life

 



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