The tidal areas of the rivers, creeks, and swamps
feeding Chesapeake Bay make for countless nooks, crannies, islands, points,
and other landmarks along it. For most of its history, Chesapeake
Bay was the principal thoroughfare for the Native Americans who lived there,
as well as for the Europeans who settled Maryland and Tidewater Virginia
later. People traveling along this watery highway navigated
by the landmarks on shore.
The list below contains a selected set of these places. Even with
this limited list, there is so much...stuff that I felt it should be off
in its own separate node. Let's leave Chesapeake Bay for scientific,
historical, and cultural content.
The list proceeds from from north to south. Many tributaries have
lists of their own places indented under them. In such sub lists (except
for the Susquehanna), we proceed up the tributary noticing places on the
left and right. For the Susquehanna, we proceed downriver into the
Bay. We are only concerned with tidal waters and landmarks along
them.
The text style indicates the type of feature:
Normal - important human landmark
Italics - tidal estuary tributary to the Chesapeake.
Small, normal - point or island
Fixed width, bold - town
Certain important features will receive a size boost and appear in
bold.
Notice that many tributary estuaries are called "river" even though
they are nothing of the sort, and the streams that feed most of them barely
count as creeks.
Many features have a suffix in parentheses inticating a relative location.
Many are self-evident, but common abbreviated suffixes are:
(E) - on the Eastern Shore
(W) - on the Western Shore
--
William Preston Lane Memorial
Bridge --
-- Maryland / Virginia Line --
-- Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel --
-- Atlantic Ocean --