Bay Facts

The Chesapeake Bay watershed stretches approximately 524 miles from Cooperstown, New York, to Norfolk, Virginia. It includes parts of six states—Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia—and the entire District of Columbia.

A few deep troughs run along much of the Bay’s length and are believed to be remnants of the ancient Susquehanna River.

The Chesapeake Bay Program was organized in 1983 to help lead and direct restoration in the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay is home to 26 different species of submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV), including freshwater plants, estuarine plants, redhead grass, and marine species.

In 1524, Italian Captain Giovanni da Verrazano became the first recorded European to enter the Chesapeake Bay.

Captain John Smith and his men sailed the Chesapeake Bay in a modest wooden boat called a shallop–an open wooden workboat such as a barge, dory, or rowboat that was small enough to row but also had one or two sails.

There were many different tribes in the region before Europeans arrived, but the dominant group were Algonquian speakers known collectively as the Powhatan tribes.

The formation of the Chesapeake Bay happened 35.5 million years ago when a meteor collided with Earth, forming a massive crater.

The word Chesepiooc is an Algonquian word referring to a village "at a big river." In 2005, Algonquian historian Blair Rudes helped dispel the widely-held belief that the name meant “great shellfish bay.”

The surface area of the Bay and its tidal tributaries is approximately 4,480 square miles.

There are nearly 1,800 local governments in the Bay watershed, including towns, cities, counties and townships.

The mouth of the Chesapeake Bay is about 12 miles wide between its northern point near Cape Charles, Virginia, and its southern point close to Cape Henry, Virginia.