The Coltons Point Times: Thank you to CPT Readers for 12 years of tolerating and supporting us!

Without Readers there is no News and no challenge to find Truth.

For those of you who never heard of Coltons Point, Maryland, which is about 99% last check, I wanted to mention our town as part of a tribute to you. From November of 2016 until October of 2017, a twelve-month period, the CPT broke through the ONE MILLION readers barrier with 1,003,681 according to Google statistics.

The latest count on readers since we started was over 3.5 million last time we checked. However, one million in twelve months is not bad. This only counts identifiable web sites and earlier statistical analysis showed there could be an additional 40% from unidentified readers.

What makes this interesting is that to this day we have never allow an advertisement to run in the newspaper, never collected a single email address to sell to the world, and we allow anonymous comments to protect the readers.

As for Coltons Point, it is a village of about 300 people on the banks of the Potomac River about ten miles from the Chesapeake Bay. The Potomac is almost seven miles wide at this point. Just offshore sits St. Clement’s Island, the third landing site for colonists to America after Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.

Here they landed in 1634, 384 years ago, but unlike the other landings, this area did not disappear into obscurity by the end of the 1600’s. So today Coltons Point is the oldest continually occupied chartered community in the history of Colonial America.

It was the first territory in the world to guarantee religious freedom, the first landing of Catholics in America, the first Jesuits in America, and the only colonial settlement to never fight with the Native Americans.

The charter granted to the Calvert family by the King of England gave them all the land from Southern Maryland to Philadelphia, and nearly to New York City. So vast were the holdings that the land for our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., was given to the fledgling nation by the St. Clement’s manor owners.

Today it seems little has changed over time though we are just 60 miles from the nation’s capital. We have no street lights, no stop lights, no schools, no government of any kind, no cops, no churches, no sidewalks, no sewers, no water, no road drainage, no mall, no fast food, no diners, no hotels, no EMS, no fire company, no gas stations, and no fiber optics.

Many Bald Eagles live in Coltons Point

Most cell phones do not work because the only cell phone tower several miles away was completed just a couple of years ago. Our phone system was installed in the 1950’s. For most of 400 years the people here were watermen harvesting the fresh oysters, crabs, eels, and fresh and saltwater fish since we are part of the Atlantic Ocean tidal basin with ocean tides and salt water mixing with the fresh water.

The Potomac River is seven miles wide and nearly 100 feet deep meaning it flows both directions at once during high tide. Sharks, submarines, and aircraft carriers have passed by and British troops have captured this area a couple of times. This is the area where John Wilkes Booth disappeared for a week after killing Lincoln and it is a place of miracles, mysteries, and survival. From the riverbank you can see across to Virginia to the birthplace of George Washington and birthplace of Robert E. Lee.

In fact, you should read the articles I have written about the mysterious past of Coltons Point and St. Clement’s Island (links at end of this story).

Ironically, not a single reader of the Coltons Point Times comes from Coltons Point. However, the thousands of readers do come from the USA, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, India, Italy, Australia, Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, a total of over 100 countries of the world.

So, thank you and I hope you tell your friends about the Coltons Point Times somewhere in America because we do not allow advertising nor do we advertise.

Jim Putnam, Publisher