The decline of the Chesapeake Bay oyster, Crassostrea virginica, resource in the post-Colonial period through the combined impacts of overfishing, environmental degradation, and disease epizootics has been well described in the literature. Newell (1988) estimated a two order of magnitude reduction in Bay oyster biomass (188 x 106 kg to 1.9 x 106 kg). Rothschild et al. (1994, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/24875491) reported that “oyster abundance declined 99.7% (90% credibility interval [CI], 98.3 to 99.9%) since the early 1800s and 92% (90% CI, 84.6 to 94.7%) since 1980” in the upper Chesapeake Bay. These depressing statistics remain widely quoted, yet they are outdated and in need of revision. The extant bay oyster populations are exhibiting increased tolerance of endemic diseases, and with careful management, including significant investment in the private fishery in Virginia, the resource has rebounded in the past two decades to support a sustainable annual harvest in the region of 1,000,000 bushels for Maryland and Virginia combined. We review survey and commercial landings data during the post epizootic recovery period, discuss future stability of the resource, and suggest a somewhat less depressing metric for comparisons with pre-Colonial oyster populations.