Why the Chesapeake?

Why bother to map the entire Chesapeake Bay, you may ask?  The answer is a bit like the old cliché joke, “because it’s there”.  This enormous inland body of water, spanning substantial parts of Maryland and Virginia, has so many iconic connections to East Coast lives as well as the United States’ history, that it begs the question.  As my interest in Coastal Art Maps specifically focuses on interesting situations where land and water meet, depiction of this great sand-bottomed sea presented nearly limitless opportunities to explore those interests, resulting in a series of 10 maps to achieve a scale that would do it justice.  Big cities, historic towns, classic seaports, islands and marshes, bridges and harbors, dots its entire 150 mile length.  Naturalists, boaters, hunters and fishermen, historic naval and merchant sailors; they have all plied the Bay.  Baltimore and Annapolis, Norfolk and Virginia Beach, the James and York Rivers, Hampton Roads and Cobb Bay.  All names that resonate in our subconscious and conjure images of seafarers are their adventures.  Is the Chesapeake not endlessly fascinating?  Why indeed!