The Historic Boatyards of America: Working Waterfronts Since 1790

Most businesses do not survive a decade. A handful of American boatyards have survived two centuries, through sail to steam to diesel to outboard, through wars and hurricanes and waterfront real estate booms that turned their neighbors into condos. They are still hauling boats today, and several of them are listed on Waypoint. Every founding date below comes from the yard's own history as stated on its website or its audited directory listing.

Two yards from the 1790s

On the Miles River in St. Michaels, Maryland, Higgins Yacht Yard & Marina operates a working boatyard and 50 slip marina on a site that, by the yard's own account, has serviced boats since 1790. George Washington was in his first term. The yard still does what the site has always done: mechanical repair, carpentry, haul outs, and winter storage.

Seven years younger and 300 miles northeast, Sag Harbor Yacht Yard & Marina traces its roots to 1797, back when Sag Harbor was one of the busiest whaling ports in the young republic. Today the Bay Street yard offers certified winter storage, slips, moorings, and a full service engine shop as a Yanmar and Westerbeke dealer. The whaleships are gone. The yard is not.

The 1800s survivors

Hartge Yacht Yard in Galesville, Maryland has served the Chesapeake yachting community since 1865, the year the Civil War ended. The modern yard runs a 50 ton travel lift, an 18 ton rigging crane, and a 3,000 square foot spray booth, and it still practices fine carpentry and wooden boat repair, a living link to the era it was born in.

Out on Long Island's North Fork, Wm. J. Mills & Co. of Greenport has been working canvas since 1880. Founded as a sailmaker's trade, the shop is now in its sixth generation, fabricating custom marine canvas, covers, cushions, and awnings for eastern Long Island boaters.

The prewar generation

The 1930s and 1940s produced a crop of family yards that never left family hands. Atlantic Yacht Basin has been family owned since 1936 on the Intracoastal Waterway in Chesapeake, Virginia, with covered storage, dockage, and full repair, refit, and restoration shops that generations of ICW cruisers know by name.

In Islamorada, Bud N' Mary's Sportfishing Marina was established in 1944 at mile marker 79.8 and grew into one of the most recognizable sportfishing operations in the Florida Keys, with dockage, fuel, charter fleets, a tackle store, and lodging.

On Virginia's Northern Neck, Tiffany Yachts has been a family boatbuilder and service yard since 1945, still offering haul outs, refits, custom carpentry, and canvas work on the lower Potomac and Chesapeake.

Tampa Bay has its own entry: Embree Marine in St. Petersburg, a full service boatyard since 1947 that runs a 55 ton Travelift handling vessels over 70 feet.

And in Deltaville, Virginia, a town that calls itself the boating capital of the Chesapeake, Norton Yachts has operated since 1948, with diesel and Yamaha service, haul outs, rigging, paint, electronics installation, and winter storage.

Why continuity matters

A yard does not last 80 or 230 years by accident. It lasts because enough boaters trusted it, season after season, to haul their most expensive possession and give it back floating. Old yards carry institutional knowledge you cannot hire: how a wooden hull moves, which fasteners a 1960s production boat hides, what the harbor bottom does in a northeast blow. When you hand your boat to a yard that survived the age of sail, you are borrowing two centuries of accumulated judgment.

Every one of these yards is listed on Waypoint, where all 921 marine pros across 13 states are checked against the business's own website before listing. Browse boat storage and marina listings to find the yards near you, or post what you need on In Search Of and let the right yard come to you.