To reach Harriet Tubman’s father’s homesite, you have to drive 100 miles southeast from Baltimore to the end of Harrisville Road on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and hope the overflowing ditches don’t flood the narrow country lane.

Then, you need to jump into a Jeep and bounce another couple of miles through waterlogged reeds. Finally, you’re welcomed by mosquitoes and greenhead flies that want to feast on your legs as you emerge onto the one flat spot.

For these reasons, among others, members of the public are not allowed to visit the one-time site of Ben Ross’ cabin, where state archaeologists have been digging since 2020. But starting Monday — the anniversary of Tubman’s death, celebrated nationwide as Harriet Tubman Day — the archaeologists are bringing the museum to us.

The Maryland Department of Transportation’s archaeologists and technicians created a virtual museum, opened Monday, to showcase the pieces of teacups, tools, pitchers, and furniture handles they have discovered at the site in Peter’s Neck known as Ben’s 10 — named for the acreage in the deed in which his enslaver gave Ross both the land and the right to its timber after he was freed. Enslaver Anthony Thompson’s will specified that Ross be freed five years after Thompson’s death. However, Ross’ family remained enslaved.

Historians believe that young Araminta Ross spent time with her father before she took her mother’s first name, Harriet, and married John Tubman. Tubman’s teen years with her father taught her survival skills that she would rely on as she led more than 70 freedom seekers north on 13 journeys, part of what would become known as the Underground Railroad.

“Her father is teaching her how to live in those woods, how to forage in those woods, how to do what she needed to do to survive in that landscape,” said historian Kate Clifford Larson, author of the Tubman biography “Bound for the Promised Land.”

Julie Schablitsky, chief archeologist for MDOT, will return to the area next month for further excavation. But she is uncertain how long her team will be able to reach the site. Sea-level rise, sinking land and saltwater intrusion are accelerating the landscape alterations.

“Climate change is making a lot of what would have been dry land all waterlogged, boggy and swampy, and you can’t effectively dig holes on those sorts of soils and find anything,” Schablitsky said last year at the site.

University of Maryland scientists predict the sea level in the state will rise approximately 1 to 2 feet by 2050 and may exceed 4 feet by the year 2100. Dorchester County’s waters are coming up even faster. Using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ming Li, an expert in geophysical fluid dynamics, has shown that more than half of Dorchester County could be underwater in the next 50 years. NOAA’s sea-level-rise tracker shows an even more dire prediction for the Peter’s Neck area — it’s likely to be inundated by 2030.

UMD agro-ecologist Kate Tully has documented an increase in salt patches on Dorchester County farmland. The salt water is killing many of the trees, further destabilizing the land. These are called ghost forests, and they indicate a changing landscape that will never return to what it was.

“The further we drive out there each year, we’re seeing more water,” she said. “We know there’s so much that we’re never going to be able to recover.”

An Underground Railroad conductor himself, Ben Ross relied on his daughter for his own family’s escape. Tubman escaped in 1849; in 1857, she led Ross and her still-enslaved mother, Rit, to Canada. They later settled in New York state, near their daughter.

State archaeologists also have discovered Native American artifacts, including pipe bowls, scraping tools, and oyster shells, indicating the site had been used before.

“Pieces of plates, pitchers, bowls and more found at the site of Harriet Tubman’s father’s home give us more insight to how the family lived two hundred years ago,” said Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld in a statement.

Historians had long suspected the Ben Ross cabin was in Peter’s Neck, but they could not explore until 2020, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bought 2,600 acres of marshland, including the Peter’s Neck property, to add to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. With permission to access the property, and a guiding deed that Larson found describing the cabin’s general location, the MDOT team found the first artifacts that led to the virtual museum.