Bay Facts

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 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.

The deepest part of the Bay, located southeast of Annapolis near Bloody Point, is called “The Hole” and is 174 feet deep.

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

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

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.

The Susquehanna River watershed includes nearly 50 thousand miles of rivers, streams and creeks.

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

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

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

Most of the water in the Bay, including in the middle portion of the Bay and its tidal rivers, is brackish–a mixture of salty and fresh, with a salinity level of greater than 0.5 ppt but less than 25 ppt.

Water temperatures in the Bay fluctuate widely throughout the year, reaching as high as 84 degrees in summer.

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

Blue crabs have a rapid growth rate and short life span. Few blue crabs live longer than three years.

The Bay produces about 500 million pounds of seafood per year.

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

Major rivers emptying into the Bay include the James, York, Rappahannock, Potomac, Patuxent, Patapsco and Susquehanna from the west and the Pocomoke, Wicomico, Nanticoke, Choptank and Chester from the east.

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 holds more than 18 trillion gallons of water.