Cut almost in two by Chesapeake Bay, Maryland presents a split personality reflective of the divisions imposed by geography. The Eastern Shore – Maryland's part of the flat Delmarva Peninsula – maintains easygoing ways shaped by a heritage of agricultrue and fishing and the isolation that until recent decades saw ferryboats as the main links across the bay. Busy central Maryland radiates from the metropolises of Baltimore and Washington. Hilly western Maryland strings as a panhandle, squeezed by the Potomac River and Mason's and Dixon's boundary into a strip only two miles wide at Hancock.

Traffic west funnels along that narrow strip, just as after the Revolutionary War pioneers streamed through a nearby mountain gateway – the Narrows on the outskirts of Cumberland. Spectactular in autumn color and spring bloom, the gorge channeled the old National Road, first U.S. highway built with federal funds. You can still see one of the stone bridges off U.S. 40 at Casselman state park.

You can see, too, the Cumberland end of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, now a 184.5-mile-long national historical park restoring stretches of a waterway that bore traffic until the 1920s. And here in the western part of the state your chances are better for seeing the “glance of summer fire” that is Maryland's state bird, the Baltimore oriole.

Plumage of yellow-orange and black, colors of the Lords Baltimore who colonized Maryland, prompted the bird's name–not the city whose harbor makes it one of the world's great ports.

The British coveted that port in the War of 1812, and their shelling of Fort McHenry brought star-spangeld-bannered results. You can visit the fort today, along with the house where its flag was made, and also such Baltimore attractions as Babe Ruth's birthplace, Edgar Allan Poe's grave, white-scrubbed marble steps, scene-decorated window screens, fine restaurants.

Critic H. L. Mencken called Chesapeake Bay an “immense protein factory” that enabled Baltimoreans to eat divinely. Crabbing and other bay fisheries over the years have fashioned the delightful lifeways of dozens of waterfront towns – Oxford, Tilghman, St. Michaels, Chestertown, St. Marys City where Maryland's settlement began.

Maryland sweeps from Appalachia divide to the bustling beach of Ocean City and such lonely barrier isles as Assateague of wild-pony fame. It has tobacco auctions and waving corn, ski runs and covered bridges, maple-sap tapping and demonstrations of a working still. Eastern Shore towns offer assemblages of colonial homes. Ellicott City preserves the look of an 1800s mill town. Wildlife sanctuaries beckon. And oddities appeal: jousting tournaments where “knights” ride pell-mell to impale a suspended ring with their lances.

ABERDEEN: U.S. Army Ordnance Museum nearby. ANNAPOLIS: Capitol; U.S. Naval Academy. BALTIMORE: Harbor cruises; spice plant; Defender's Day. CUMBERLAND: Heritage Days. EMMITSBURG: Mother Seton shrine. FREDERICK: Francis Scott key tomb, Barbara Fritchie House; Hessian Barracks. LUTHERVILLE-TIMONIUM: State Fair. NEW MARKET: Antique shops. PERRY HALL: Jousting tournament. PORT TOBACCO: Colonial homes. SALISBURY: Wildfowl-decoy carving. SHARPSBURG: Antietan Battlefield nearby. ST. MICHAELS: Historic homes. UPPER MARLBORO, WALDORF: Tobacco auctions. WESTMINSTER: Farm museum.

(poster text about Maryland)

The Chesapeake Bay, the ria or drowned valley of the Susquehanna River, is the largest estuary in the United States. The bay, lying off the Atlantic Ocean, is surrounded by Maryland and Virginia.

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Baltimore Oriole
(Maryland State Bird)

The Baltimore Oriole, Icterus galbula, a small icterid blackbird received its name from the resemblance of the male's colors (black and gold) to those on the coat-of-arms of Lord Baltimore.

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Maryland State Horse - Thoroughbred
Maryland State Dog - The Chesapeake Bay Retriever
Maryland State Insect - The Checkerspot Butterfly

Maryland State Crustacean - The Blue Crab
Maryland State Fish - The Rockfish
Maryland State Reptile - Diamondback Terrapin
Maryland State Boat - The Skipjack

The Maryland State Tree is the White Oak, a long-lived oak that is native to eastern North America.

In June of 2002, the oak that stood at Wye Mills on Maryland's Eastern Shore was toppled by powerful thunderstorms. It was one of the largest in the world being more than 100 feet high, a branch spread of 165 feet and a circumference of 31 feet, 10 inches.

The white oak is also the state tree of Connecticut, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey.

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Black Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) are part of the Asteraceae family.

FYI - the genus namesake is Olaus Rudbeck, a professor of botany in Sweden and teacher of Linnaeus.

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Lighthouses are towers (or buildings) designed to aid in navigation along shorelines by marking dangerous coastlines and safe entries to harbors with light. Maryland lighthouses are on the Chesapeake Bay Eastern and Western shores and tributaries.

George Calvert, First Baron Baltimore, Granted Maryland Colony, Giclee Print

George Calvert
b. 1579; England
d. 4-15-1632; London

George Calvert, a Catholic and 1st Baron Baltimore, was granted a royal charter to settle in the region that was to become the state of Maryland.

The city of Baltimore is named after Lord Baltimore who took his title from a place in Ireland, Baltimore being an anglicized form of the Irish Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning “Town of the Big House”.

His son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605 -1675), governed the colony of Maryland for forty-two years from his home in England.

Francis Scott Key, Giclee Print

Francis Scott Key
b. 8-1-1779; Terra Rubra Plantation, Maryland
d. 1-11-1843; Baltimore, MD

Lawyer, author, and amateur poet Francis Scott Key wrote a poem, “Defence of Fort McHenry”, that would become the lyrics to the United States' national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Key, who was detained onboard a British truce ship while negotiating the release of prisoners, was inspired by the sight of the large American flag in “the dawn's early light” after a night of bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy from Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

Fort McHenry, Baltimore, MD Art Print

BTW - The oversized flag that Key saw was sewn by Mary Young Pickersgill, a widow who ran a successful business “designing, sewing, and selling ‘silk standards, cavalry and division colours of every description,’ including signal and house flags for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and merchant ships that frequented Baltimore’s harbor”.

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Barbara Fritchie
b. 12-3-1766; Lancaster, PA
d. 12-18-1862; Frederick City, MD

“Shoot if you must, this old gray head, but spare your country's flag,” John Greenleaf Whittier popularized Barbara Fritchie by writing a poem about a supposed 1862 incident where the 96 year old Fritchie defiantly waving a Union flag out her window as the Army of Northern Virginia, led by Stonewall Jackson, marched by on its way to the Civil War battle at Antietam.

Stephen Decatur
b. 1-5-1779; Sinepuxent, MD
d. 3-22-1820; Washington, DC (duel)

Naval officer Stephen Decatur is notable as the first American hero after the Revolutionary War. He led the first U.S. Marines in a stelth attack to retake or disable the captured USS Philadelphia in the Barbary Wars (“to the shores of Tripoli”), and in the War of 1812. His squadron of ten ships put an end to the paying of tribute to pirate states with the Second Barbary War.

Decatur died of a wound suffered in a duel with a former naval officer he had disciplined. Many US cities and counties are named after him.

President Lincoln at Antietam, 1862, Photographic Print

The Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties, was fought on September 17, 1862 near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek.

Also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, it was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil.

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Battles of the Civil War Map from National Geographic shows battle sites with call-outs describing specific battles, dates, routes.

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McCulloch v Maryland
3-6-1819, “. . . Although, among the enumerated powers of government, we do not find the word “bank” or “incorporation,” we find the great powers to lay and collect taxes; to borrow money; to regulate commerce; to declare and conduct a war; and to raise and support armies and navies . . . But it may with great reason be contended, that a government, entrusted with such ample powers . . . must also be entrusted with ample means for their execution. The power being given, it is the interest of the nation to facilitate its execution . . . ”

background on McCulloch v Maryland

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