⚓ Maryland

About Maryland

🏛 Annapolis State House

Maryland is defined by water — the Chesapeake Bay, America's largest estuary, bisects the state and shapes everything from its economy and cuisine to its culture and identity. The Bay stretches 200 miles from the Susquehanna River in the north to the Atlantic at the Virginia Capes, and its 11,684 miles of tidal shoreline (more coastline than the entire US West Coast) support the blue crab fishing industry that is synonymous with Maryland's culinary culture.

Annapolis, the state capital, is one of America's most perfectly preserved colonial port cities — an 18th-century grid of brick townhouses, cobblestone streets, and the Maryland State House (the oldest US state capitol in continuous legislative use, and the building where Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War in 1784) overlooking a harbor busy with sailing boats and Chesapeake Bay watermen. The United States Naval Academy, established in 1845, gives the city a distinctive military energy and opens its grounds and museum to visitors. The Annapolis Harbor, with its watermen unloading crabs and the outdoor seafood restaurants on City Dock, delivers the archetypal Chesapeake experience: a steamed bushel of blue crabs, Old Bay seasoning, a wooden mallet, and cold beer at a waterfront table.

Baltimore is Maryland's cultural engine — a city of distinct, fiercely proud neighborhoods that has reinvented its waterfront while retaining the gritty character that makes it one of the East Coast's most authentically American cities. The Inner Harbor's National Aquarium (outstanding, particularly the Australia and Amazon exhibits), the American Visionary Art Museum (a joyously eccentric collection of self-taught art), and the Harborplace waterfront complex anchor the tourist zone. But the real Baltimore is in the neighborhoods: Fells Point's cobblestone streets and Federal Hill's bar scene; Little Italy's Sunday gravy; the Lexington Market (the oldest continuously operating market in America, opened 1782).

Assateague Island, shared with Virginia, is one of the East Coast's most unusual barrier islands — a National Seashore with 37 miles of undeveloped Atlantic beach, inhabited by feral horses (the famous Chincoteague Ponies) that wade through the surf and graze the dunes. No hotels, no boardwalk — just wild beach, wild ponies, and one of the finest seaside campgrounds on the East Coast. Ocean City, just north, provides the commercial beach contrast.

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