This week we go to a place that even you non-hybrid drivers will find takes far, far less than a tank of gas: Herald Harbor.

Herald Harbor is the place I most wanted to live when I came to The Sun and began covering Anne Arundel County. Technically, it wasn't part of my beat, but I tried to get there as much as I could, if only to drive around and look at the beautiful views of the Severn in the Crownsville neighborhood. It was tucked away, off generals Highway, and unlike neighboring Sherwood Forest, you didn't need a code to get in.

It's not surprising that a newspaperwoman would be curious about Herald Harbor Several years ago, fellow blogger Tom Pelton wrote a wonderful story about it, so I'm not the only one.

As Tom described it in 1999:

William Randolph Hearst would try anything to boost his newspapers' circulation, offering his subscribers racehorses, gold coins, fabricated stories about starving orphans and yellow journalism that ignited the Spanish-American War.

    But the scheme hatched by his Washington Herald was so outrageous that he fired the publisher responsible for it. The Herald built a utopian, all-white summer colony north of Annapolis, used its front page to sell lots in "Herald Harbor" and required those buying land to subscribe to the newspaper.

As Tom told it, "The paper bought 460 acres of hilly peach orchards 5 miles north of the Naval Academy.  The Herald used front-page news stories to sell the lots. The plan was to earn a profit off the real estate deals and offer low prices for the 25-foot-wide lots only to those who agreed to subscribe to the newspaper."

So, the newspaper was the thing of value, and the land was the enticement to get it? My, how times have changed.

The segregated history is painful, to say the least, and the exclusive clubhouses and gambling machines are long gone, leaving Herald Harbor much less a resort and much more a suburb of Anne Arundel.

But there remains something different, and I think hopeful, about this place.

Drive in (no security gate) and you will notice trees on both sides: long, skinny trunks sprouting leaves. I always meant to do a story on the scotch brooms, which bloom around there, but never have. Anyway, it's a lush woods, known as the "green cathedral." It was saved from development by the sheer will of several residents, including one Billy Moulden, who fought to keep it green.

The second thing: You can see new houses: large ones that seem to be constructed entirely of windows and wedged into hillsides, the better to maximize views. But I noticed many, many small fishermen's cottages -- they looked like they couldn't be more than 1000 square feet. A few had "for sale" signs, indicating they wouldn't be small for long. But it is a window into the way we used to live -- and one that is rapidly closing.

Unlike other local travel destinations, I can't give you a really good of things to do in the area.  If you know someone there, maybe you can glom onto their boat privileges. In the meantime, you can get a good, if expensive meal at the Sputnik cafe and hear some nice music at the Ram's Head Roadhouse.

And Annapolis is only about 7 minutes away.

Incidentally, we didn't end up moving there. Too expensive. But I heard something about a housing slump, so maybe prices have dropped....