The sun is rising. The bow of a small white boat, a workboat, splits the shiny waters guided by a single man wrapped in foul weather gear. Silhouetted by the sun, the captain exudes confidence, independence, and a toughness that speaks to a willingness to take on the risks and challenges offered by Mother Nature. This is the Eastern Shore waterman.
Though lifestyles differ across the cultural and ecological zones of Maryland, nicknamed “America in Miniature,” the characteristics of industriousness, determination, and honesty with a tenderness of heart revealed in the love of nature, and the companionship of family and dog defines Marylanders. It is this love of adventure that sent Marylanders to the wilderness of western Maryland to open up routes even further west; it is this driving spirit that brought the City of Baltimore back from the brink of extinction after the great fire of 1904 leveled 1,500 buildings. It is this drive that sends Marylanders out to sea in tiny sailboats to race around the world. It is this sense of freedom and independence and entrepreneurship and challenge that makes Marylanders the East Coast equivalent of the west’s Marlboro man.
A Chesapeake Bay skipjack sails in hazy light off St. Michaels, Maryland.
The Chesapeake Bay is America’s largest estuary—the 10,000-year-old drowned Susquehanna River—and almost splits the state in half. Some say it is the soul of the state that shaped who we were in the past and who we are today. Its fingers cross the mournful or serene Atlantic Coastal Plain of sand, seagrass, marshland, and lodgepole pines, where one can still live off the land solo or clustered in small towns. This is the perfect space for shallow draft workboats and the last of the sailing workboats—the State’s official boat, the Skipjack—that for years hoisted in the Bay’s bountiful oysters. On its west, waterfalls crash down rivers lined with oak trees that once provided power for the mills that fed a nation and where giant cities grew on the rolling hills of the Piedmont Plateau.
It is a shallow bay with a median depth of 46 feet, 30 miles at its widest, 2.8 miles at its narrowest, and 200 miles long. Large ocean-going ships traverse it, carrying goods to and from the nation’s fifth largest port, on the Patapsco River, in blue-collar Baltimore, the Nation’s largest independent city, first established as a port town in 1706. With a surface area of 4,479 square miles and a watershed area of 64,299 square miles, the Bay’s reach covers six states and as far west as the 3,300-foot Backbone Mountain in Garrett County, Maryland’s highest point in the Appalachian Mountains.
Explorer and Captain John Smith, who settled in Jamestown, Virginia, wasn’t the first to discover the Bay, but he was the first to explore it extensively. In 1607 and 1608, he described an area teeming with fish and wildlife beyond his imagination. Despite toxic wastes that, today, threaten the Bay’s flora and fauna, the Bay still produces more finfish and shellfish than any other estuary in the U.S., which sustains, to a degree, the independent watermen of the Eastern Shore.
The pirate Black Beard swaggered along the shores of the Bay and was rumored to have stashed his treasure here somewhere. In 1781, the French Fleet destroyed the ships of the Royal Navy, helping to bring to a close America’s Revolutionary War. In 2006, the U.S. Congress approved the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, the Nation’s first national water trail park.
Maryland’s Eastern Shore
The Eastern Shore is one of the state’s three very different ecological zones. The nine counties of the Shore cover one-third of the State’s land area. It is humid and semitropical agricultural land for tomatoes, corn, and melons. Eight percent of the state’s population lives here. Progressive Farming magazine recently recognized Chestertown, founded in 1705 in Kent County, as the Nation’s No. 1 rural destination in which to live. It is hard to imagine that in 1790, the census identified Chestertown as the geographic population center of the United States.
Aerial view of Ocean City, Maryland. Ocean City is one of the most popular beach resorts on the East Coast and is considered one of the cleanest in the country.
Situated along the Atlantic flyway, the area is a waterfowl hunter’s paradise. Each November, Marylanders from across the state go on holiday, trading their suits and ties for hunting garb and a shotgun, flocking to the Shore with their premier waterfowl hunting dog, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, in tow. The Chesapeake Retriever is an American original—a sporting dog bred and raised from two pups rescued from a foundering ship off Maryland’s coast in 1807. By 1877, it was recognized as the Chesapeake Bay Ducking Dog, a top sportsman gun dog. The State Legislature named the dog the official State dog in 1964.
Maryland rockfish, the State fish, love the brackish waters (half salt, half fresh) of the Chesapeake Bay, choosing this as its spawning grounds, which produces 90 percent of the ocean’s striped bass population. The State’s Diamondback terrapin, the only turtle to like brackish water, has a lifespan of 100 years. They hibernate in the clay banks of many marshes and are protected in a bayside turtle sanctuary on Kent Island.
Residents of the Eastern Shore who chant “there is no life west of the Bay” have not always been content to be a part of the State of Maryland. Three times, between 1833 and 1852, there were secession attempts, finally losing the effort in 1852 by one vote. Then in 1998, secession reared its ugly head again, when two senators from the Shore proposed the area become a separate state.
Imagine a Maryland without its beach resort of Ocean City…nine miles of play along the Atlantic Ocean and the White Marlin Capital of the World. The town of 8,000 souls enlarges to 350,000 on weekends and hosts the largest white marlin ocean fishing tournament on earth. The hurricane of 1933 cut an inlet from the ocean to Sinapuxent Bay creating this fishing mecca. Before the storm, Ocean City was the vacationing center for women and families traveling by stagecoach and ferry to the barrier island that opened up in 1875 with the building of the 400-room Atlantic Hotel, with its dancing and billiard parlors.
The newly created inlet separated Ocean City from Assateague Island, home of wild pony shipwreck survivors made famous in Misty of Chincoteague. The area is now a National Sea Shore Park.
Salisbury, the commercial hub of the Delmarva Peninsula, is situated within 100 miles of Richmond, Dover, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Roads from the east, west, south, and north pass through this city, the Shore’s largest, leading visitors to the seaside resorts and horse races at Ocean Downs, or to lunch in the restored barn where Secretariat once lived. The Shore’s largest corporation, Frank Perdue’s Chickens, is headquartered here. Situated on the Wicomico River, the city was once a port town second only to Baltimore in Maryland. Today, it’s a university town and recognized as the home of the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art. Mark Seidel, a meteorologist of Weather Channel fame since 1992, grew up here.
Without the Eastern Shore, Washington College in Chestertown—America’s 10th oldest college, named for the first president who was a founding patron—would no longer be a part of Maryland. The college annually awards the Sophie Kerr grant of $50,000 to a graduating student with the most promising literary potential. The Sultana Education Foundation also lives in Chestertown. After posting 150,000 volunteer hours, students in Kent County helped launch the Schooner Sultana, a replica of a British Naval Ship, in 2001, celebrating the heritage of this wealthy colonial city and port town on the Chester River. Each year, a weekend-long festival celebrates the Boston Tea Party, which never occurred on the Eastern Shore, but did in the State’s capital, Annapolis.
Central to the State
Somewhere in the Annapolis harbor, or in the dredge poured into the Naval Academy athletic fields, are the ashes and remains of the ship Peggy Stewart, burned by the citizens of Annapolis in protest of the English tea tax. Annapolis, chartered as a municipality in 1708 by Queen Anne, had wrested the capital designation away from St. Mary’s City in 1694. Settled in 1634, by the Catholic Calverts, early colonists were guaranteed freedom of religion under the most progressive charter for any colony at the time. In 1649, the Act of Toleration reaffirmed this freedom in law. Seeking protection for themselves, Puritans fled into Maryland and revolted against the Catholics, burning churches in Southern Maryland and abandoning the Acts of Toleration for decades.
Charles Carroll, the capital city’s resident Catholic, became not only the wealthiest American in the colonies, but a noteworthy activist for the Revolution and framer of America’s Constitution. For a brief time, Annapolis, the colonial cultural center and “Athens of America” was capital of the new United States. Maryland deeded land from Montgomery and Prince George’s counties to create Washington, D.C., which became the Nation’s seat of government along the Potomac River, which doubles as the state’s southern boundary.
After the Revolutionary War ended in 1776, industry gravitated to the deep-water port of Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city and financial power center. It was here, at the first federally funded Fort McHenry, that Francis Scott Key witnessed the American flag still flying after heavy British bombardment in the War of 1812. The thrill and pride and recognition that all was not lost inspired him to pen a poem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” first published in 1814, that would be named the National Anthem in 1931.
Painting by Francis Blackwell Mayer, 1896, depicting the burning of Peggy Stewart.
Historically a working-class port town, Baltimore, with a population of 700,000, is the East Coast’s most affordable city. At one time the second largest port that received immigrants, the city is distinguished by its 300 ethnic neighborhoods. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi hails from Baltimore’s Little Italy, famous for its Italian restaurants.
The city also has a dialect all its own. Natives speak of “Bawlmer” and “Merlin,” reflecting the city’s roots to West Country England. Even the State sport of jousting acknowledges our roots to the Knights of the Round Table. The State’s team sport, of course, is lacrosse, a favorite of the Algonquin tribes, with intense rivalries displayed each year between collegiate teams Navy, Johns Hopkins, Loyola, Towson, and Maryland.
After a flurry of industrial might in the manufacturing of Domino Sugar, McCormick Spices, and steel at Sparrows Point, the city of monuments became the Nation’s center for health and human services and life sciences. With Johns Hopkins University and Hospital leading the way, the area now houses 350 biotech research firms. It is a leader in human genome research. Exploration in the universe is guided by the nearby Goddard Space Flight Center and the National Aerospace Agency, top public-private industries in the high-tech world of today.
The counties of Central Maryland—with 84 percent of the state’s 5,699,478 population, 52 percent of whom are women—now lead the nation in median income with $70,545. Ranked 42nd in size with an area of 12,407 square miles, this tiny state, at 249 miles long and 1.8 miles wide at its most narrow point in the town Hancock, ranks 19th in the nation for population, and 5th for population density at 541 people per square mile.
In Central Maryland counties, the density grows even higher, but the hills and mountains of Western Maryland offer an escape valve from the hustle and bustle of the D.C.-Baltimore metro corridor. The four counties of Western Maryland cover 22.4 percent of the State’s land area, and hold 8.4 percent of its population. In places within the region, density can drop to 40 people per square mile.
Boardwalk trail leading to Paw Paw Tunnel along the C&O Canal towpath near Oldtown, Maryland. Photo by Nicolas Raymond.
Western Pursuits
Western Maryland is the State’s center for history buffs exploring the Civil War in Frederick County, where the bloodiest of battles took place. It is also here, in Great Meadows, where General Braddock was defeated in the French-Indian War in the 1750s, accompanied by a 23-year old George Washington. It is a mecca for the stories of transportation, the land where the first federally-supported national road, U.S. Route 40, began carrying families with cattle and livestock in 1811 to new homesteads on a westward trek as far as Vidalia, Illinois. It is here, where the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was built along the Potomac River, carrying, during the course of its 100-year history, tons of coal and timber to the port town of Washington, D.C. It is here, where a 3,300-foot tunnel, the Paw Paw, would be hacked from mountains by men with picks and shovels for the canal and its mule-drawn barges to pass through. It is here, where early settlers, ever restless for new lands, crossed the Potomac through the Shenandoah Valley, leaving orchards of apples in their path.
It is here, where the B&O Railroad, headquartered in Baltimore, began its trek westward, breaking ground on July 4, 1825, the same day President John Q. Adams cut the ribbon for the building of the Canal. The B&O, the first railroad to be chartered in the United States and the first train to attain a speed of 30 miles per hour, would finally outlive the canal in its transport of goods ever westward. The Nation’s leaders would ride the B&O, the first with a dining car and air conditioning, to relax and camp in the mountains of Garret County, named for the railroad’s president.
Chimney Rock is a popular outdoor attraction at Catoctin Mountain Park in Western Maryland.
And it is here where Meshack Browning, born in 1781, in a book titled My 44 Years as a Hunter, describes his life and livelihood in the mountains of Allegany County that teemed with bear and deer. It is here where Thomas Cresap, a frontiersman from the gateway city to the west, Cumberland, laid claim to land disputed between Maryland and Pennsylvania, leading to Cresap’s War, which finally settled the dispute of the States’ boundary that became the Mason Dixon line.
Today, the region of 100-inch snowfalls is Maryland’s ski resort. The C&O trail is a National Park, a 180-mile hiking and biking trail, from D.C. to Cumberland. The Potomac and Savage rivers welcome canoes, kayakers, and rafters. Deep Creek Lake, the Savage, and Youghiogheny rivers are vacation spots for people young and old from Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and beyond. The Adventure Sports Center International in McHenry is patterned after the Olympic Sports Arena in Greece and is a one-of-a-kind kayak center carved out of the top of Wisp mountain. It is a tough training ground for competitive kayak contenders. Much of Garrett County is parkland. Overall, Maryland has 40 state parks and seven state forests that cover about 225,000 acres.
The State has several nicknames. Some refer the “Old Line State” to the Mason-Dixon Line. But there is historical reference to a declaration by George Washington about Maryland’s crack army troops, the only state that had regular troops during the Revolutionary War, as the “Old Line.” Evidently, these troops distinguished themselves not only in battle but with a special hat dubbed a cockade.
Maryland is also called the Free State, some say because of its original, short-lived religious freedom; others point to the 49.1 percent of Maryland’s African American population that were free in 1860. History also records that the editor of the Sun papers, Hamilton Owens, often referred to it as the Free State in 1923 when he mocked a Georgia Congressman for accusing Maryland of being a traitor to the Union because it never passed a state enforcement act supporting prohibition. “Perhaps,” Owens wrote, “Maryland the Free State should secede from the Union before acting to prohibit the sale of liquor.”
But it is “America in Miniature” that best defines Maryland. Crossing diverse terrain, from the Atlantic to the ancient Appalachian Mountains and encompassing three distinct lifestyles, the state hangs together on the character of its people fostered by the overarching Chesapeake Bay in tune with the motto of the state “Manly Deeds and Womanly Words.”
