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The Chesapeake Bay is nearly 200 miles long, and varies in width between four and 25 miles, making it America's largest estuary. (An estuary is a geographical mixing bowl: a partially enclosed body of water where salt water flowing in from the ocean meets fresh water flowing out from rivers.) Near its mouth, the Chesapeake is as salty as the Atlantic Ocean; up north, the water is completely fresh.
Half of the fresh water entering the Chesapeake comes from the Susquehanna River; the rest from the 47 other large and small rivers that drain into the Bay, including the Potomac, the York, the James, the Choptank, the Nanticoke, the Rappahannock, the Patuxent, and the Patapsco.
Washington, DC, is built along the Potomac River. Baltimore, MD, is on the Patapsco. Other well-known cities and towns include Norfolk and Newport News, in Virginia, and Annapolis, Cambridge, Crisfield, St. Michaels, Oxford, and Havre de Grace, in Maryland.
You'll hear two theories about how the Bay was formed: The most popular says that the Chesapeake formed at the end of the last ice age. Sea levels rose as glaciers melted and flooded the valley of the Susquehanna River, which used to flow directly into the Atlantic Ocean. An alternative theory holds that the Bay was carved by a meteorite that hit about thirty-five million years ago.
Pippa Hunnechurch loves the Chesapeake Bay for its beauty, its history, and because it is one of the world's great sailing regions — with thousands of small boats and an almost unlimited number of summer weekend cruising destinations. The photograph (right) shows a sailboat raft-up — a group of friends (or a sailing club) who have sailed to the same destination. You are likely to find hundreds of similar rafts in coves and creeks up and down the Bay on a Saturday evening during sailing season.