The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula with its mouth of the Bay at the south end located between Cape Henry and Cape Charles. With its northern portion in Maryland and the southern part in Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay is a very important feature for the ecology and economy of those two states, as well as others surrounding within its watershed. More than 150 major rivers and streams flow into the Bay's 64,299-square-mile (166,534 km2) drainage basin, which covers parts of six states and all of Washington, D.C.
The Delmarva Peninsula, or simply Delmarva, is a large peninsula on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by the vast majority of the state of Delaware and parts of the Eastern Shore regions of Maryland and Virginia. The peninsula is 170 miles (274 km) long. In width, it ranges from 70 miles (113 km) near its center, to 12 miles (19 km) at the isthmus on its northern edge, to less near its southern tip of Cape Charles. It is bordered by the Chesapeake Bay on the west, Pocomoke Sound on the southwest, the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.
Claiborne is an unincorporated community in Talbot County, Maryland, United States. The village is located on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay near the mouth of the Eastern Bay at 38°50′15″N76°16′40″W, and uses ZIP code 21624. The 2000 U.S. Census listed the population as 147 and the number of homes as 84, slightly down from its 1941 population of 156. Between 1890 and 1930, the village was a busy port for passenger and then automobile ferry service across the Chesapeake Bay, with numerous stores and motels/resorts, including Maple Hall. A post office was added in 1893 and the Protestant Episcopal Church of Claiborne was built in 1898. In 1912, an elementary school and Methodist Church were added. Before 1912, students attended school in nearby McDaniel. The town's first school consisted of the kitchen of the local railroad pavilion, used as a classroom. In 1913, the town became home to the Claiborne Fresh Air Association, Inc., which was formed for the purpose of providing 10 weeks of fresh air and summer vacation for children who had been exposed to tuberculosis. The role of Claiborne as a terminal for cross-Bay ferries was diminished in 1930 when the primary route shifted to Matapeake in Kent Island. It ended altogether in 1938 when the direct connection from Annapolis to Claiborne was terminated and only an auxiliary shuttle between Claiborne and Romancoke on Kent Island remained. This ended in 1952, bringing to an end all ferry service to Claiborne.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge–Tunnel (CBBT) is a 17.6-mile (28.3 km) bridge–tunnel crossing at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, the Hampton Roads harbor, and nearby mouths of the James and Elizabeth rivers in the U.S. state of Virginia. It connects Northampton County on the Delmarva Peninsula and Eastern Shore with Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Portsmouth on the western shore and south side/Tidewater, which are part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of eight close cities around the harbor's shores and peninsula. The bridge–tunnel originally combined 12 miles (19 km) of trestle, two one-mile-long (1.6 km) tunnels, four artificial islands, four high-level bridges, approximately two miles (3.2 km) of causeway, and 5.5 miles (8.9 km) of northeast and southwest approach roads crossing the Chesapeake Bay and preserving traffic on the Thimble Shoals and Chesapeake dredged shipping channels leading to the Atlantic. It replaced vehicle ferry services that operated from South Hampton Roads and from the Virginia Peninsula since the 1930s. Financed by toll revenue bonds, the bridge-tunnel was opened on April 15, 1964, and remains one of only 12 bridge–tunnel systems in the world, three of which are located in the water-dominated Hampton Roads area of Tidewater Virginia.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is a major dual-span bridge in the U.S. state of Maryland. Spanning the Chesapeake Bay, it connects the state's rural Eastern Shore region with the urban Western Shore, between Stevensville and the capital city of Annapolis. The original span, opened in 1952 and with a length of 4.3 miles (6.9 km), was the world's longest continuous over-water steel structure. The parallel span was added in 1973. The bridge is officially named the Gov. William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge after William Preston Lane Jr. who, as the 52nd Governor of Maryland, initiated its construction in the late 1940s finally after decades of political indecision and public controversy.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a part of the U.S. state of Maryland that lies mostly on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay. Nine counties are normally included in the region. The Eastern Shore is part of the larger Delmarva Peninsula that Maryland shares with Delaware and Virginia.
Kent Island is the largest island in the Chesapeake Bay and a historic place in Maryland. To the east, a narrow channel known as the Kent Narrows barely separates the island from the Delmarva Peninsula, and on the other side, the island is separated from Sandy Point, an area near Annapolis, by roughly four miles (6.4 km) of water. At only four miles wide, the main waterway of the bay is at its narrowest at this point and is spanned here by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The Chester River runs to the north of the island and empties into the Chesapeake Bay at Kent Island's Love Point. To the south of the island lies Eastern Bay. The United States Census Bureau reports that the island has 31.62 square miles (81.90 km2) of land area.
Maryland Route 8 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known for most of its length as Romancoke Road, the state highway runs 8.37 miles (13.47 km) from Romancoke Pier in Romancoke north to MD 18 in Stevensville. MD 8 is the main north–south highway of Kent Island in western Queen Anne's County. The state highway is also the first highway encountered on U.S. Route 50 and US 301 east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. South of Matapeake, MD 8 is paralleled by the Kent Island South Trail.
Maryland Route 404 (MD 404) is a major highway on Maryland's Eastern Shore in the United States. It runs 24.61 miles (39.61 km) from MD 662 in Wye Mills on the border of Queen Anne's and Talbot counties, southeast to the Delaware state line in Caroline County, where the road continues as Delaware Route 404 (DE 404) to Five Points. The Maryland and Delaware state highways together cross the width of the Delmarva Peninsula and serve to connect the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and U.S. Route 50 (US 50) with the Delaware Beaches. Along the way, MD 404 passes through mostly farmland and woodland as well as the towns of Queen Anne, Hillsboro, and Denton. The route is a four-lane divided highway between US 50 and east of Denton, with the remainder of the route a two-lane undivided road.
U.S. Route 50 is a major east–west route of the U.S. Highway system, stretching just over 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from Ocean City, Maryland on the Atlantic Ocean to West Sacramento, California. In the U.S. state of Maryland, US 50 exists in two sections. The longer of these serves as a major route connecting Washington, D.C. with Ocean City; the latter is the eastern terminus of the highway. The other section passes through the southern end of Garrett County for less than 10 miles (16 km) as part of the Northwestern Turnpike, entering West Virginia at both ends. One notable section of US 50 is the dual-span Chesapeake Bay Bridge across the Chesapeake Bay, which links the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area with the Eastern Shore region, allowing motorists to reach Ocean City and the Delaware Beaches.
The Little Creek-Cape Charles Ferry was a passenger ferry service operating across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay from the 1930s until 1964. Known also as the Princess Anne-Kiptopeke Beach Ferry or Little Creek-Kiptopeke Beach Ferry, the service connected Virginia Beach, Virginia with Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Departures from and arrivals to Cape Charles were matched with times of Pennsylvania Railroad passenger trains such as the Del-Mar-Va Express and the Cavalier that operated the length of the Delmarva Peninsula.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel District is a political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is overseen by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel Commission, and operates the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel between the Hampton Roads and Eastern Shore regions of the state. The District comprises six cities, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, and the two Eastern Shore counties of Northampton and Accomack.
Maryland Route 33 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The state highway runs 23.17 mi (37.29 km) from Tilghman Island east to Washington Street in Easton. MD 33 connects Easton, the county seat of Talbot County, with all communities on the peninsula that juts west into the Chesapeake Bay between the Miles River and Eastern Bay on the north and the Tred Avon River and Choptank River on the south. The state highway passes through the historic town of Saint Michaels, home of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, and enters Tilghman Island by passing over Knapps Narrows on the busiest bascule drawbridge in the United States.
The Eastern Bay is a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay located between Queen Anne's County, Maryland and Talbot County, Maryland on the Eastern Shore. Its main tributaries include the Miles River and the Wye River. It is located south of the Chester River and north of the Choptank River and is connected to the Chester River via Kent Narrows.
The 1964 Chesapeake Bay crossing study was a study conducted by the state of Maryland in 1964 to explore the possibility of building another bridge across the Chesapeake Bay in addition to the existing Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
U.S. Route 301 (US 301) in the state of Maryland is a major highway that runs from Delaware to the Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River into Virginia. It passes through three of Maryland's four main regions: the Eastern Shore, the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, and Southern Maryland. US 301 serves mainly as a bypass of Baltimore and Washington from Delaware to Virginia.
The Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry Company ran both passenger and automobile ferry service across the Chesapeake Bay from 1919 to 1952. The initial service was between Annapolis, Maryland, on the western shore and Claiborne, Maryland, on the eastern shore. In July 1930, a second shorter route was added between Annapolis, Maryland, and Matapeake on Kent Island, Maryland. Business increased so rapidly at that point that another ferryboat was added. In May, 1938 the Claiborne route was changed to run from Claiborne to Romancoke, Maryland, on the lower end of Kent Island, from which passengers could then connect to the Matapeake to Annapolis run. In 1943, the Annapolis United States Naval Academy absorbed the property where the ferry terminal had been, so service was switched from Annapolis to a new terminal at Sandy Point on the western shore. By May 1951, the ferries were handling 1 million vehicles and 2 million passengers annually. Ferry service stopped running in 1952 when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was completed.
The effects of Hurricane Isabel in Maryland and Washington, D.C., were among the most damaging from a tropical cyclone in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, United States. Hurricane Isabel formed from a tropical wave on September 6, 2003, in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. It moved northwestward, and within an environment of light wind shear and warm waters, it steadily strengthened to reach peak winds of 165 mph (265 km/h) on September 11. After fluctuating in intensity for four days, Isabel gradually weakened and made landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with winds of 105 mph (165 km/h) on September 18. It quickly weakened over land and became extratropical over western Pennsylvania the next day.
Matapeake State Park is a public recreation area on Chesapeake Bay occupying the site of a former ferry landing in Matapeake, Kent Island, Maryland. The landing served the state-owned Chesapeake Bay Ferry System before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened. The park is leased and managed by Queen Anne's County.
The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic railroad, nicknamed Black Cinders & Ashes, ran from Baltimore, Maryland to Ocean City, Maryland consisting of 87 miles (140.0 km) of center-line track and 15.6 miles (25.11 km) of sidings. Chartered in 1886, the railroad started construction in 1889 and cost $2.356 million ($2022=67,862,000).
