Maryland State Map

Regions of Maryland

Maryland has one of the most irregular shapes of any state. The Chesapeake Bay nearly splits it in two, and in the west the state narrows to a panhandle less than 2 miles wide near Hancock, squeezed between the Pennsylvania line and the Potomac River.

• Western Maryland: Garrett, Allegany and Washington counties in the Appalachian Mountains, with Cumberland, Hagerstown, Deep Creek Lake and the state’s highest point, Hoye-Crest, in Garrett County.
• Central Maryland: Baltimore and its suburbs, plus Frederick, Westminster and the rolling Piedmont farmland north toward Pennsylvania.
• Capital region: Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., including Rockville, Gaithersburg, Bowie and College Park.
• Southern Maryland: Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s counties on the peninsula between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. St. Mary’s City was the colony’s first settlement, in 1634.
• Eastern Shore: the Maryland part of the Delmarva Peninsula, shared with Delaware and Virginia: flat farmland, marshes and fishing towns such as Easton, Cambridge and Salisbury, plus the Atlantic resort of Ocean City and Assateague Island National Seashore.

Chesapeake Bay and rivers

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. Its main source, the Susquehanna River, enters at Havre de Grace in the north. The Potomac River forms Maryland’s southern border with Virginia and West Virginia, passing Washington, D.C., where the District was created partly from land Maryland gave to the federal government. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath follows the Potomac for 184.5 miles from Georgetown to Cumberland. Other bay rivers include the Patapsco (Baltimore’s harbor), the Severn (Annapolis) and the Patuxent.

The northern border with Pennsylvania is the Mason–Dixon Line, surveyed in the 1760s to settle a colonial boundary dispute.

Counties and Baltimore City

Maryland has 23 counties plus Baltimore City, which the Census Bureau counts as a county equivalent, so county maps of the state show 24 local jurisdictions. Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, next to Washington, D.C., are the two most populous. Garrett County is the westernmost and Worcester County holds the state’s only Atlantic coastline. Annapolis served briefly as the US capital in 1783 and 1784, and the Maryland State House is the oldest state capitol still in continuous legislative use.

Major highways

• I-95: from the Delaware line near Elkton through Baltimore (via the Fort McHenry Tunnel) to the Capital Beltway, then across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into Virginia.
• I-695 and I-495: the Baltimore Beltway and the Capital Beltway around Washington, D.C.
• I-70: west from Baltimore through Frederick and Hagerstown to Hancock and Pennsylvania.
• I-68: from Hancock through Cumberland and Garrett County into West Virginia.
• I-270 and I-83: I-270 links the Capital Beltway with Rockville, Gaithersburg and Frederick; I-83 runs north from Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania.
• I-97 and US 50: I-97 links Baltimore and Annapolis; US 50 runs from Washington through Annapolis, across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (about 4.3 miles long) to Easton, Salisbury and Ocean City.
• US 13 and US 301: north–south routes on the Eastern Shore and through Southern Maryland.