In the summer of 2021 three albums of photographs were found in a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona. The albums contained about 100 pictures taken around 1890 on Hog Island, a remote barrier beach on the Virginia coast. What were these pictures doing in a museum in Arizona, and how did they get there?It turns out that the photographs documented one of the first efforts to build a beach resort on the mid-Atlantic coast. The development was called Broadwater Island, and its backers were prominent officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the University of Pennsylvania. The railroad had just been built on the Virginia coast, and northern entrepreneurs regarded the remote islands as prime development land. Although the resort was not a success, it brought together a cast of remarkable and memorable characters. It includes a president of the United States, a secretary of state and ambassador to Great Britain, a famous architect, a professional cricket player, a newspaper publisher, and the University of Pennsylvania football team of 1894.Authors Curtis and Lynn Badger spent months researching court records, newspaper archives, and other documents to create a narrative for these remarkable photographs. The landscape shown in the photographs was long ago claimed by the sea, but these pages revive Broadwater Island and give it a new life. It was another time, and another place, and this is its story.
