Maryland, United States — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Maryland known for?

Maryland is known as America in Miniature, a Mid-Atlantic state that folds sea, mountain, city, and countryside into one small span of the United States. The contrasts run deep. Rural reaches spread along the Eastern Shore around the Chesapeake Bay, while the land climbs westward into the Appalachian Mountains and the built-up country presses in from the surrounding region.

Baltimore anchors its urban life. Annapolis, the capital, keeps its maritime past close to the water.

Where is Maryland?

Maryland sits in the Mid-Atlantic, a small state of the United States built around the wide tidal basin of the Chesapeake Bay. The bay defines it. Its waters reach far inland, carving the state into a low, marshy Eastern Shore on the east and a broader mainland on the west that rises steadily toward the Appalachian Mountains.

Virginia lies to the south. West Virginia runs along the western flank, Pennsylvania forms the northern boundary, and Delaware shares the eastern side toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic opens along a short outer coast, giving the Eastern Shore ocean-facing beaches while the sheltered Chesapeake Bay laps its many inner shorelines and creeks.

Rivers thread down to the tidewater. Along the mainland, the land climbs from the coastal plain through rolling country and into the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains that mark the far western reach of Maryland. The Eastern Shore stays flat and open.

Baltimore stands on the bay's upper reaches. Annapolis keeps to the water nearby, and the whole of this compact ground, from mountain to marsh to open sea, earns the state its old name of America in Miniature.

What is Maryland like?

Maryland carries the character of a small state that holds many worlds, summed up in its old name of America in Miniature. The Chesapeake Bay shapes daily life. Along its shores, watermen work the tidewater, and the culture of the Eastern Shore turns on the rhythms of the bay, its seafood, and its quiet flatland towns.

Baltimore holds a different world. The port city gathers the state's urban life around the Inner Harbor, a working waterfront turned to museums and public quays. Annapolis keeps the maritime past alive as the capital, a small harbour town of old streets by the water.

Westward, the mountains change the tone again. In the Appalachian Mountains, the settled life of the coast gives way to upland country, so that a single small state of the United States runs from ocean beach to mountain ridge. The bay ties it together.

From Baltimore and its Inner Harbor to the working shores of the Eastern Shore and the fields that run inland toward the Appalachian Mountains, the life of Maryland keeps returning to the water of the Chesapeake Bay.

What is the history of Maryland?

Maryland entered the United States in 1788, among the earliest states of the new republic. Annapolis became its capital. The town on the Chesapeake Bay held the seat of government while Baltimore grew into the state's great port on the bay's upper reaches, and the settled country spread from the tidewater toward the Appalachian Mountains inland.

Its founding year still anchors that story.

What is the climate of Maryland?

Maryland has a temperate climate that shifts across its small span, from the mild, humid shore of the Chesapeake Bay to the cooler uplands of the Appalachian Mountains. Summers run warm and humid. Near the Atlantic Ocean and the tidewater of the Eastern Shore, the sea softens the seasons, while the western ridges hold snow and sharper cold through the winter months.

The bay tempers the middle ground.

How do you get to Maryland?

Maryland is reached mainly through Baltimore, the state's great port on the upper Chesapeake Bay. Roads converge on the bay. From Baltimore and the capital at Annapolis, routes run east across the water to the Eastern Shore and the Atlantic Ocean, and west through rolling country toward the Appalachian Mountains and the interior of the United States.

Water crossings knit it together.