Bay Facts

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.”

Salinity is highest at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, where water from the Atlantic Ocean enters.

Water temperatures in the Bay fluctuate widely throughout the year, dropping as low as 34 degrees in winter.

Mallows Bay is the final resting place for more than 200 historic shipwrecks dating back to the Revolutionary War. Commonly referred to as the “Ghost Fleet” of Mallows Bay, it is the largest collection of shipwrecks in the Western Hemisphere.

The 110-mile-long Patuxent River is the longest river to flow exclusively within the borders of Maryland.

The Chesapeake Bay watershed has 150 major rivers and streams, but contains more than 100,000 smaller tributaries.

The 195-mile-long Rappahannock River is the longest free flowing river in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Two of the United States’ five major North Atlantic ports—Baltimore and Hampton Roads—are on the Bay.

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 Chesapeake Bay was formed about 10,000 years ago when glaciers melted and flooded the Susquehanna River valley.

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

The Chesapeake Bay watershed contains three distinct geologic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, the Piedmont plateau and the Appalachian province.

The Chesapeake Bay holds more than 18 trillion gallons of water.

Legislation proposed by Maryland’s Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative John Sarbanes to incorporate the bay into the nation’s park system.

The Bay receives about half its water volume from the Atlantic Ocean in the form of saltwater. The other half (freshwater) drains into the Bay from the enormous 64,000-square-mile watershed.

At 4,863 feet above sea level, Spruce Knob is the highest point in the Chesapeake watershed.

There are twelve known species of shark that have been sighted in the Chesapeake Bay, with only five considered a common occurrence—smooth dogfish, sand tiger shark, sandbar shark, spiny dogfish, and bull shark.

While one-third of watershed residents have volunteered their time or donated their money to a charitable organization, less than two in ten volunteers have done so for an environmental organization.