USA Guide
The Capital Region
Maryland
Founded as the sole Catholic colony in strongly Protestant America, and, in the nineteenth century, isolated as the northernmost slave state, Maryland has always been unique. Within its small, irregularly shaped area, its attractions range from the frantic boardwalk beaches of Ocean City to the sleepy fishing villages of the Chesapeake Bay to the bustling urban center of Baltimore. The Chesapeake Bay's legendary blue crabs and sweet rockfish are another highlight, eaten by the weekend boaters who cruise between the Bay's colonial-era towns.
Maryland boasts a number of firsts for the United States, including the first Catholic cathedral, gas-lit street, and telegraph line (between Baltimore and Washington DC), while Kent Island on Maryland's Eastern Shore was the third permanent English settlement (behind Jamestown and Plymouth Rock), founded in 1631.
Maryland's largest city is the busy port of Baltimore, a quirky metropolis with a revitalized urban waterfront, thriving cultural scene, and eclectic neighbourhoods. Western Maryland stretches over a hundred miles to the Appalachian foothills, its rolling farmlands notable chiefly for the Civil War killing grounds at Antietam. Just twenty miles south of Baltimore, picturesque Annapolis has served as Maryland's capital since 1694. Some of the state's most worthwhile destinations, from the pretty fishing and yachting town of St Michaels to the untouched wilderness of Assateague Island, are across the Chesapeake Bay on the Eastern Shore, connected to the rest of the state by the US-50 bridge but still a world apart.
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