Reports
Geography and geology of Maryland
1957, Vokes, H.E.
Bulletin 19
Introduction
Captain John Smith, the first white man to see the territory that is now Maryland, is reputed to have exclaimed: "Heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful habitation." But he saw only the Chesapeake Bay country; he did not know of the diversity of terrain that lay to the west, which, added to the two-thirds that is tidewater, gives Maryland a landscape that is more delightfully varied than that of any other State. For thirty-two miles the waters of the open Atlantic roll on the shore of Worcester County. On the opposite western side of the peninsula that forms the "Eastern Shore" is the land-bound sea that is Chesapeake Bay dividing the State from north to south. West of the bay are low rolling hills and valleys that increase in relief across the Piedmont toward the higher ridges of the Appalachians. Behind the first ridges of these mountains is the broad Hagerstown valley of Washington County, as scenic and fertile as its southern counterpart, the Shenandoah valley of Virginia. Continuing westward across ridges and valleys, one finally rises to the elevations of the Allegheny plateau in the westernmost reaches of the State.
This diversity of landscape, and the underlying geologic and physiographic reasons for it, give Maryland a diversity of economy second to none. Minerals, fertile soils, fisheries, power for industry, and natural ports and routes for trade and commerce combine to give this State a rich geographic heritage.
