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There are 23 counties and one independent city in the U.S. state of Maryland. Though formally an independent city rather than a county, the City of Baltimore is considered the equal of a county for most purposes and is functionally a county-equivalent in most respects.
Urban and Rural Areas. The Census Bureau's Geography Department, as part of the 2020 Decennial Census, has released statistical information on urban area characteristics by state (i.e., population, housing units, total land area in square meters, land area in square miles, total area covered by water in square meters, area covered by water in ...
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Jan 24, 2024 · Detailed Maps of Maryland. Large detailed map of Maryland with cities and towns. 2593x1865px / 3.38 Mb Go to Map. Maryland County Map. 1100x643px / 116 Kb Go to Map. Maryland road map. 3606x1988px / 4.04 Mb Go to Map. Road map of Maryland with cities. 2626x1520px / 861 Kb Go to Map.
- Overview
- Relief
- Drainage and soils
Maryland, constituent state of the United States of America. One of the original 13 states, it lies at the centre of the Eastern Seaboard, amid the great commercial and population complex that stretches from Maine to Virginia. Its small size belies the great diversity of its landscapes and of the ways of life that they foster, from the low-lying and water-oriented Eastern Shore and Chesapeake Bay area, through the metropolitan hurly-burly of Baltimore, its largest city, to the forested Appalachian foothills and mountains of its western reaches.
Maryland was named in honour of Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I, by a grateful Cecilius (Cecil) Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, who was granted a charter for the land in 1632. Annapolis, the state capital, lies on Chesapeake Bay, roughly equidistant from Baltimore (north) and Washington, D.C. (west).
The Coastal Plain covers about half of Maryland’s land area, yielding to the region called the Piedmont Plateau at a fall line running from the northern tip of the District of Columbia through Baltimore and to near the northeastern corner of the state. The Catoctin ridgeline in the west forms the gateway to the Appalachians.
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The Eastern Shore, the area east of Chesapeake Bay, is flat with extensive wetlands. The maximum elevation there is 100 feet (30 metres) above sea level. The area west of the Chesapeake, called the Western Shore, is generally flat, but some low hills reach heights of 300 to 400 feet (90 to 120 metres). Most of the Coastal Plain is farmland with small rural communities, except for the urban areas of Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Salisbury, and Ocean City.
Maryland’s share of the Appalachian Mountains comprises a series of forested barriers, with many of the intervening valleys still uncleared. Backbone Mountain, hugging the West Virginia line, is the highest point in Maryland, at 3,360 feet (1,024 metres).
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To the south the Coastal Plain is sandy; to the north it is loamy and fertile. Its water edges—consisting of salt marshes, or wetlands—exasperate mapmakers as erosion periodically fills in a swamp or deletes an entire island: St. Clements Island (also called Blakiston Island), for example, is about one-tenth the size it was in 1634. The Chesapeake’s some two dozen estuarial tributaries provide the state with about 3,200 miles (5,150 km) of shoreline—subject to frequent change. The most important of nature-made revisions was an irruption of the ocean, during a storm in 1933, through Assateague Island, a sand barrier island on the Atlantic shore, dividing it in two. The northern portion, Fenwick Island, now has at its southern end the resort town of Ocean City, formerly located mid-island. The southern portion is now Assateague Island National Seashore, whose territory is shared with the state of Virginia. The inlet between the two islands has become a boon to Ocean City’s resort fishing fleet. It has been kept open by regular dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Piedmont Plateau has good farming soil except for belts of clay that are mined for brick kilns; from early colonial times, the exteriors of Maryland buildings have glowed with salmon-coloured brick made from these clay deposits. To the west and parallel to the fall line, the low Parr’s Ridge forms a drainage divide separating water flow east to the Chesapeake and southwest to the Potomac River.
The most salient feature of Maryland’s topography is Chesapeake Bay, which serves the port of Baltimore, divides the Eastern Shore from what was once called Maryland Main, and covers some 1,840 square miles (4,770 square km). On a summer weekend as many as 100,000 sailboats and powerboats may be seen on the water. But the bay has its drawbacks. Swimmers shun its brackish, murky water after the late-summer onset of billions of small stinging jellyfish, and the cross-bay bridges are often filled to capacity with the crush of summer weekenders going to and coming from the ocean beaches.
Dredging is also necessary to maintain the 50-foot- (15-metre-) deep ship channel to Baltimore and to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which connects the northern end of the Chesapeake to the Delaware River. The bay must also be protected against pollution by the municipalities, industries, and farms in its drainage area. The floor of the bay was once lined with oysters, but silt, pollutants, and hostile microorganisms have pushed the beds up into tributary rivers and diminished the yield even there. The largest catch is the blue crab, which arrives on dinner tables in such forms as crab soup, crab cakes, steamed hard-shell crabs, soft-shell crabs, and crab imperial. The bay, which was called by journalist and critic H.L. Mencken a “great big outdoor protein factory,” still affords a precarious living to hundreds of people who live and work on the water.
Rockville, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and fourth-largest municpiality by population. Bowie, the fifth-largest municipality in Maryland by population. Hagerstown, Maryland's sixth-largest municipality by population. Annapolis, the state's capital and seventh-largest city by population. ‡ State capital county seat.
Jan 23, 2024 · Large detailed map of Maryland with cities and towns Click to see large Description: This map shows cities, towns, interstate highways, U.S. highways, state highways, main roads, secondary roads, rivers, lakes and parks in Maryland.
BASIC INFORMATION. 2010 Census Population: 5,773,552 (19th) Land Area: 9707.2 square miles (42nd) Density: 594.8 persons per square mile (5th) Capital: Annapolis.
