Island for sale, complete with goats
Want to buy an island — and some goats? Nestled in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay lies a unique real estate opportunity for anyone who wants to get away from it all. That is, as long as he doesn’t mind absorbing about 30 goats into his investment portfolio. “How many (other) islands are for sale in Chesapeake Bay?” asked Bob Bradshaw, whose family is trying to sell the island. “I don’t know of any.” The 55-acre enclave near Smith Island is listed at $1.5 million, a bargain compared with the original asking price of $15 million a decade ago. Bradshaw is the fifth-generation owner of Bradshaw & Sons Funeral Home in Crisfield. The business started on Smith Island in 1885 after Aaron Bradshaw had to bury his own wife because the bay had frozen over, according to a company history on its website. The family’s history intertwined with Goat Island in 1956, when Aaron Bradshaw’s grandson, Harvey, purchased the acreage from the state of Maryland as a personal hunting and fishing retreat. He planted pine trees and constructed a shanty or two but otherwise left the land as it was.
How the goats ended up on the island is anyone’s guess, Bradshaw said. He has never set foot on the island himself. He doesn’t know where they came from, except that they appeared some time after his grandfather became the owner.
Islands around the Eastern Shore of Maryland have been used for centuries as natural livestock pens. In the days before barbed wire, their watery barriers gave livestock owners a way to keep their herds from roaming far and wide.
The formal name of Goat Island is Bradshaw’s First Purchase, but almost no one calls it that, Bob Bradshaw conceded.
“Everyone calls it Goat Island because there’s goats there,” he said. Duke Marshall, a Smith Island native, said no one tends to the herd, but it’s not unusual for islanders to drop off a bag of feed now and then during winter.
A bucolic hideaway awaits whoever finally snaps up the property, Bradshaw said. The property is accessible only by boat, yet it boasts a key modern comfort: electricity. His grandfather persuaded the electric company at some point to run a line beneath Levering Creek to power his shanty. Zoning laws would allow up to two structures to be built, he added.