The Patuxent River flows through Calvert County, Maryland. Photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program with aerial support by Southwings.
First: The Patuxent River at Jefferson Patterson Park in Calvert County, Maryland. Creative commons license. Second: Sotterley Plantation in Hollywood, Maryland dates to 1703 and was the home of Governor George Plater. It remains the State’s oldest tidewater plantation open to the public. Creative commons license. Third: U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer and retired Maryland State Senator Bernie Fowler (in blue overalls and hat) wade into the Patuxent River during the 2008 Patuxent River Wade-In in Broomes Island, Maryland. Photo by Alicia Pimental/Chesapeake Bay Program. Fourth: A paddler visits Jug Bay Natural Area in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program.
The Patuxent River is the longest and largest river wholly contained within the State of Maryland. It begins on the Piedmont Plateau near the historic town of Mt Airy, which splits itself between Carroll and Frederick counties. The river’s source is also a half-mile from the pond and spring that is also the source of the Patapsco River, which flows east toward urban Baltimore.
Curiously, the Patuxent chooses another route, southward, winding through a 980-square mile, mostly rural watershed to the Chesapeake Bay 115 miles away. It is a fairly shallow river bounded by wetlands and forests with evidence of human life along its banks dating back 9,000 years and, at one time, teeming with fish.
Bernie Fowler, a long-serving Maryland State Senator, remembered it as a river of “goodness and kindness,” giving its fish, crabs, and oysters to nourish the people who lived near it during the Great Depression. At its mouth, near some of the best farmland, families also worked the water for 300 years. In 1663, the area housed a manor occupied by Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, as a government meeting place until 1689. Up until 1940, the mouth of the Patuxent was a remote location on a Chesapeake Bay coastline with water so clear you could see crabs swimming six feet below.
World War II would change that. The remoteness attracted the U.S. Navy, looking for a place to consolidate aviation and weapons test programs. In 1940, by eminent domain, the Navy acquired 6,400 acres forcing the families of Cedar Point to leave. Patuxent Naval Air Station was built and dedicated on April 1, 1943. The prime farmland was transformed into a boomtown, as 7,000 construction workers descended upon the area to build a facility that would employ 35,000 personnel.
The rapid expansion had a devastating effect on the river. By 1970, the Patuxent has become one of the most polluted rivers on the East Coast. By 2010, the St. Mary’s County population had expanded to 100,000, with 75 percent of its economy dependent on the Naval Air Station. But, the area just didn’t have the utility system to support the population growth. Senator Fowler, the river’s greatest champion, saw the water get cloudy and the fish and crabs diminish. To call attention to the issues of pollution and clean water, Senator Fowler began what he called the “white sneaker index.” In 1988, holding hands with elected leaders, he paraded into the water at Broomes Island to measure how far one could wade and still see the toes of his white sneakers in the water. On that day it was 10 inches, not the six feet it was in 1940.
Song writer and Chesapeake Bay storyteller Tom Wisener once penned “just wade out into the water…and on the day we see our feet again, there will be celebration in our town.” The Bernie Fowler Sneaker Index annually continues as a publicity effort to bring attention to the impact that growth and stormwater runoff have on our tributaries.
The good news—at least 74 miles of the river are bounded by parks and open space. Near Laurel in Prince Georges County, America’s only National Wildlife Refuge covers 12,800 acres of one of the largest forest areas in the Mid-Atlantic. Founded in 1936 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and operated by the U.S. Department of the Interior, it is the nation’s largest environmental center for wildlife research and education.
The river also boasts a number of historic sites that tell the story of a new country. In 1705, the Snowden family opened an iron works—Maryland’s first forge—on land granted to them by King Charles in 1685. Charles Carroll of Annapolis would write in a letter in 1753 that the Snowden iron works was the only one in Maryland to have ore near a navigable river. In 1781, Major Thomas Snowden built the Montpelier Mansion overlooking the river on 9,000 acres of farmland. Today, the Georgian-style mansion is a National Historic Landmark.
Farther south, the Sotterley Plantation in St. Mary’s County was built in 1703. The site houses a main home, warehouse, smoke house, slave quarters, and a colonial revival garden. A frame structure, it was the home of Governor George Plater, and is a National Landmark and Historic property. It remains the State’s oldest tidewater plantation open to the public.
First: Historic photograph of Savage Mill, in Savage, Maryland, and the Bollman Truss iron suspension bridge. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Scanned from the Preservation Maryland physical photograph collection. Second: Aerial view of the hangar area of the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, USA, about late 1940s.
Upriver in Howard County, the mill town of Savage was founded in 1650 along the Little Patuxent tributary. Driven by the falls of the Little Patuxent, the Savage Mills—first a grist mill founded in 1734, which became a thriving textile industry by 1822—were sponsored by John Savage, a Philadelphia Merchant. A branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was extended to the mill across a now famous Bollman Truss iron suspension bridge—the only one of its kind in the world.
In Anne Arundel County, archeological excavations by the Lost Towns Project occurring near the Jug Bay Wetlands Park have unveiled an ancient Native American site on a bluff overlooking the river. Original excavations dated findings to early Woodland tribes and a major trading site. As exploration continued, a startling discovery of crushed bones revealed a rare mortuary ceremonial site dating back 9,300 years. Finding this, according to archeologist Al Luckenbach, “is pretty rare and virtually unheard of in the archeological record.”
A trip down the Patuxent River is a journey through the history of the earliest life along this waterway of forests, grasslands, and marshes. It has stories to tell. Despite growth in the Maryland counties, it passes through it is still largely rural. Parks line it’s banks, providing places for hikers, anglers, and kayakers to imagine those who first traversed the Patuxent—an Algonquin word meaning “water running over loose stones.”
