Maryland is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east. The state's largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, and the Chesapeake Bay State. It is named after the English queen Henrietta Maria, known in England as Queen Mary.
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States located between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" due to its status as the first English colonial possession established in mainland North America and "Mother of Presidents" because eight U.S. presidents were born there, more than any other state. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most populous city, and Fairfax County is the most populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's estimated population as of 2018 is over 8.5 million.
Bear Island is an island located in Potomac, Montgomery County, Maryland between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal near the Great Falls. It is managed by the National Park Service as part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park and is co-owned by The Nature Conservancy. One of its most popular attractions is the Billy Goat Trail. Pets are not allowed on Bear Island, nor is smoking.
The Potomac River is located within the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and flows from the Potomac Highlands into the Chesapeake Bay. The river is approximately 405 miles (652 km) long, with a drainage area of about 14,700 square miles (38,000 km2). In terms of area, this makes the Potomac River the fourth largest river along the Atlantic coast of the United States and the 21st largest in the United States. Over 5 million people live within the Potomac watershed.
In geography and geology, a cliff is a vertical, or nearly vertical, rock exposure. Cliffs are formed as erosion landforms by the processes of weathering and erosion. Cliffs are common on coasts, in mountainous areas, escarpments and along rivers. Cliffs are usually formed by rock that is resistant to weathering and erosion. Sedimentary rocks most likely to form cliffs include sandstone, limestone, chalk, and dolomite. Igneous rocks such as granite and basalt also often form cliffs.
Little Falls is an area of rapids located where the Potomac River crosses the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, descending from the harder and older rocks of the Piedmont Plateau to the softer sediments of the Atlantic coastal plain. Situated at the point where Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia meet, it is the first "cataract", or barrier, to navigation encountered on the Potomac River when going upstream. It may be viewed from the heavily trafficked Chain Bridge, about a half mile upstream. It is named in contradistinction to Great Falls, about 5 miles further upstream.
Students scrambling over boulders on the Billy Goat Trail. Mather Gorge is on the left.
Hiking is a common activity with many trails along and near the gorge. On the Maryland side, in the C&O Canal National Historical Park, Section A of the Billy Goat Trail follows the gorge—from below Great Falls to above the Anglers Inn river put-in. The River Trail in Great Falls Park follows the gorge on the Virginia side. It is also a popular rock climbing attraction as the cliff heights and terrain lend themselves well to top rope climbing. Generally, most of the rock climbing occurs on the vertical cliffs of the Virginia side of the gorge, below the Observation Decks and above the 90 degree river bend.
Hiking is the preferred term, in Canada and the United States, for a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails (footpaths), in the countryside, while the word walking is used for shorter, particularly urban walks. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, the word "walking" is acceptable to describe all forms of walking, whether it is a walk in the park or backpacking in the Alps. The word hiking is also often used in the UK, along with rambling, hillwalking, and fell walking. The term bushwalking is endemic to Australia, having been adopted by the Sydney Bush Walkers club in 1927. In New Zealand a long, vigorous walk or hike is called tramping. It is a popular activity with numerous hiking organizations worldwide, and studies suggest that all forms of walking have health benefits.
The Billy Goat Trail is a 4.7-mile (7.6 km) hiking trail that follows a path between the C&O Canal and the Potomac River within the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park near Great Falls in Montgomery County, Maryland. The trail has three sections: Section A, the northernmost, is 1.7 miles (2.7 km); Section B is 1.4 miles (2.3 km); and Section C, the southernmost, is 1.6 miles (2.6 km)
Climbing is the activity of using one's hands, feet, or any other part of the body to ascend a steep object. It is done for locomotion, recreation and competition, in trades that rely on it, and in emergency rescue and military operations. It is done indoors and out, on natural and man-made structures.
Whitewater kayaking is the sport of paddling a kayak on a moving body of water, typically a whitewater river. Whitewater kayaking can range from active, moving water, to demanding, extreme whitewater.
Canoeing is an activity which involves paddling a canoe with a single-bladed paddle. Common meanings of the term are limited to when the canoeing is the central purpose of the activity. Broader meanings include when it is combined with other activities such as canoe camping, or where canoeing is merely a transportation method used to accomplish other activities. Most present-day canoeing is done as or as a part of a sport or recreational activity. In some parts of Europe canoeing refers to both canoeing and kayaking, with a canoe being called an Open canoe.
Great Falls is a series of rapids and waterfalls on the Potomac River, 14 miles (23 km) upstream from Washington, D.C., on the border of Montgomery County, Maryland and Fairfax County, Virginia. Great Falls Park, operated by the National Park Service, is located on the southern banks in Virginia, while Chesapeake and Ohio Canal parkland is located along the northern banks of the river in Maryland. The Potomac and the falls themselves are legally entirely within Maryland, with the state and county boundaries following the south bank of the river.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mather Gorge.
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Related Research Articles
Great Falls is a census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. The population as of the 2010 census was 15,427, an increase of 80.5% from the 2000 census.
The Potomac Company was created in 1785 to make improvements to the Potomac River and improve its navigability for commerce. The project is perhaps the first conceptual seed planted in the minds of the new American capitalists in what became a flurry of transportation infrastructure projects, most privately funded, that drove wagon road turnpikes, navigations, and canals, and then as the technology developed, investment funds for railroads across the rough country of the Appalachian Mountains. In a few decades, the eastern seaboard was Chris-crossed by private turnpikes and canals were being built from Massachusetts to Illinois ushering in the brief seven decades of the American Canal Age. The Potomac Company's achievement was not just to be an early example, but of being significant also in size and scope of the project, which involved taming a mountain stream fed river with icing conditions and unpredictable freshets (floods).
The Allegheny Mountain Range, informally the Alleghenies and also spelled Alleghany and Allegany, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less technologically advanced eras. The barrier range has a northeast–southwest orientation and runs for about 400 miles (640 km) from north-central Pennsylvania, through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia, to southwestern Virginia.
The Youghiogheny River, or the Yough for short, is a 134-mile-long (216 km) tributary of the Monongahela River in the U.S. states of West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. It drains an area on the west side of the Allegheny Mountains northward into Pennsylvania, providing a small watershed in extreme western Maryland into the tributaries of the Mississippi River. Youghiogheny is a Lenape word meaning "a stream flowing in a contrary direction".
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park is located in the District of Columbia and the states of Maryland and West Virginia. The park was established in 1961 as a National Monument by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to preserve the neglected remains of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and many of its original structures. The canal and towpath trail extends along the Potomac River from Georgetown, Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland, a distance of 184.5 miles (296.9 km). In 2013, the path was designated as the first section of U.S. Bicycle Route 50.
The Potomac Heritage Trail, also known as the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail or the PHT, is a designated National Scenic Trail corridor spanning parts of the mid-Atlantic and upper southeastern regions of the United States that will connect various trails and historic sites in the states of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. The trail network includes 710 miles (1,140 km) of existing and planned sections, tracing the outstanding natural, historical, and cultural features of the Potomac River corridor, the upper Ohio River watershed in Pennsylvania and western Maryland, and a portion of the Rappahannock River watershed in Virginia. The trail is managed by the National Park Service.
The Patowmack Canal is a series of five inoperative canals located in Maryland and Virginia, United States, that was designed to bypass rapids in the Potomac River upstream of the present Washington, D.C. area. The most well known of them is the Great Falls skirting canal, whose remains are managed by the National Park Service as it is within Great Falls Park Virginia, an integral part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
The New River Gorge National River is a unit of the United States National Park Service designed to protect and maintain the New River Gorge in southern West Virginia. Established in 1978, the NPS-protected area stretches for 53 miles (85 km) from just downstream of Hinton to Hawks Nest State Park near Ansted.
.
Olmsted Island is a small island in the middle of the Potomac River in the U.S. state of Maryland, near Great Falls which is a part of C & O Canal National Historical Park, located across the river from Great Falls Park. It is a part of Potomac, Maryland.
The U.S. National Whitewater Center (USNWC) is an outdoor recreation and athletic training facility for whitewater rafting, kayaking, canoeing, rock climbing, mountain biking, and hiking which opened to the public on November 4, 2006.
The Center is located in Charlotte, North Carolina on approximately 700 acres (2.8 km2) of land adjacent to the Catawba River, with 35+ miles of developed trail. The USNWC is an official Olympic Training Center for whitewater slalom racing.
Ohiopyle State Park is a Pennsylvania state park on 19,052 acres (7,710 ha) in Dunbar, Henry Clay and Stewart Townships, Fayette County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The focal point of the park is the more than 14 miles (23 km) of the Youghiogheny River Gorge that passes through the park. The river provides some of the best whitewater boating in the Eastern United States. Ohiopyle State Park is bisected by Pennsylvania Route 381 south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The park opened to the public in 1965, but was not officially dedicated until 1971.
The Clearwater River is the largest tributary of the North Thompson River, joining it at the community of Clearwater, British Columbia. The Clearwater rises from glaciers in the Cariboo Mountains and flows in a mostly southerly direction for 201 km (125 mi) to the North Thompson. Its entire course, except the last 5 km (3 mi), is within Wells Gray Provincial Park. Its confluence with the North Thompson is protected by North Thompson River Provincial Park.
Difficult Run is a 15.9-mile-long (25.6 km) tributary stream of the Potomac River in Northern Virginia in the United States. The area has had many historical uses dating back to the early 1800s. Today, the area is used recreationally by visitors interested in the watershed's variety of options including hiking, biking, fishing, boating, climbing, and bird watching. The wildlife at Difficult Run is vast as 163 different species can be seen depending on the season. There are 41 different soil types found on the trail and alongside the stream. The stream is part of the greater 57.7- square-mile Drainage basin, or watershed, located in the north-central portion of Fairfax County and drains directly to the Potomac River.
Lehigh Gorge State Park is a 4,548 acres (1,841 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Luzerne and Carbon Counties, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park encompasses the Lehigh Gorge, which stretches along the Lehigh River from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control dam in Luzerne County to Jim Thorpe in Carbon County. The primary recreational activity at Lehigh Gorge State Park is white water rafting.
Little Falls Branch, a 3.8-mile-long (6.1 km) tributary stream of the Potomac River, is located in Montgomery County, Maryland. In the 19th century, the stream was also called Powder Mill Branch. It drains portions of Bethesda, Somerset, Friendship Heights, and the District of Columbia, flows under the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O), and empties into the Potomac at Little Falls rapids, which marks the upper end of the tidal Potomac.
Blackwater Canyon is a rugged, heavily wooded, eight-mile (13 km) long gorge carved by the Blackwater River in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA. For many years, it has been the object of controversy as environmental activists have contended with industrial interests over its ultimate status.
