Smith Island, MD

Smith Island sits out in the Chesapeake Bay, roughly nine miles off the coast of Crisfield, and you can only get there by ferry or private boat. Life here revolves around three small, quiet villages: Ewell, Tylerton, and Rhodes Point. With no bridges to the mainland, most people get around on foot or by golf cart, living alongside a working watermen community famous for fresh soft-shell crab and the iconic, multi-layered Smith Island cake. It offers an exceptionally peaceful, slow-paced lifestyle, though moving here also means embracing the practical realities of high tides, isolation, and coastal weather.