Bay Facts

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

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

The Bay is surprisingly shallow. Its average depth, including all tidal tributaries, is about 21 feet. A person who is six feet tall could wade through more than 700,000 acres of the Bay and never get his or her hat wet.

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

The Bay and its tidal tributaries have 11,684 miles of shoreline—more than the entire U.S. west coast.

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

More than 1,800 vessels have met their end in Bay waters, lying broken and battered on the Bay's floor.

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

The Bay itself is about 200 miles long, stretching from Havre de Grace, Maryland, to Virginia Beach, Virginia.

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

At filter feeders, oysters can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day.

There are 6,282,718 acres of accessible green space within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

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

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.

Collectively, the Chesapeake’s three largest rivers—the Susquehanna, Potomac and James Rivers—provide more than 80% of the fresh water to the 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.

The Bay’s width ranges from four miles near Aberdeen, Maryland, to 30 miles near cape Charles, Virginia.

There are as many as 200 invasive species present in the Chesapeake Bay watershed that are causing some serious issues in an already-stressed ecosystem. Some examples include blue catfish, snakehead, zebra mussel, purple loosestrife, and nutria.