Then, in the 1920s the oyster supply, believed inexhaustible, gave out. The town declined but survived on the back of a more reliable crustacean, the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, considered the most delectable in the world. Today a trip to Crisfield is an immersion in blue crab culture. You can watch the crabs hauled onto the docks by commercial watermen or visit any stretch of Chesapeake waterfront and join Marylanders young and old dangling handlines into the brackish water of muddy estuaries and coves in catching the blue crab. For crab enthusiasts there is no better time to visit Crisfield than labor Day Weekend for the National Hard Crab Derby.
Crabs are to Maryland what horses are to Kentucky.
And since Kentucky has a derby for horses why shouldn't Maryland have a derby for crabs. It was thinking like that by an editor of the Crisfield Times in 1946 that led to the first Hard Crab Derby the following year. A tub of ornery crustaceans was dumped in the middle of a 20-foot chalk circle in the middle of Main Street, with the first crab reaching the chalk line declared the winner. It didn't take long for competitors to begin taking the race semi-seriously. By 1948 the crabs were being named when Scoobie scooted to victory.