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The flag of Maryland is the official flag of the U.S. state of Maryland and the 17th-century heraldic banner of arms of Cecil, 2nd Baron Baltimore. It consists of the arms of his father George, 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632), quartered with those of his grandmother, heiress of the Crossland family. The flag was officially adopted by the ...
Oct 1, 2024 · A cross botonée frequently serves as the finial for the pole on which the flag is displayed. U.S. state flag consisting of a quartered design of alternating red-white and black-yellow panels.Alone of the 13 original states, Maryland has a state flag based on a flag flown under British rule. According to the laws of heraldry, the personal ...
The flag excels as a state banner because it commemorates the vision of the founders while it reminds us of the struggle to preserve the Union. It is a unique symbol of challenges met and loyalties restored, a flag of unity and reconciliation for all the state's citizens. 1 :Design - The Calvert colors are described as gold and black, and the ...
Jun 14, 2017 · The design of the Maryland state flag is steeped in Maryland history. It was George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, and his family, who were the colonial proprietors of Maryland. His mother, Alicia Crossland, was an heiress to the Crossland line, meaning that Calvert was free to use her coat of arms as well. Earlier iterations of the Maryland ...
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Maryland, constituent state of the United States of America. One of the original 13 states, it lies at the centre of the Eastern Seaboard, amid the great commercial and population complex that stretches from Maine to Virginia. Its small size belies the great diversity of its landscapes and of the ways of life that they foster, from the low-lying and water-oriented Eastern Shore and Chesapeake Bay area, through the metropolitan hurly-burly of Baltimore, its largest city, to the forested Appalachian foothills and mountains of its western reaches.
Maryland was named in honour of Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I, by a grateful Cecilius (Cecil) Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, who was granted a charter for the land in 1632. Annapolis, the state capital, lies on Chesapeake Bay, roughly equidistant from Baltimore (north) and Washington, D.C. (west).
The Coastal Plain covers about half of Maryland’s land area, yielding to the region called the Piedmont Plateau at a fall line running from the northern tip of the District of Columbia through Baltimore and to near the northeastern corner of the state. The Catoctin ridgeline in the west forms the gateway to the Appalachians.
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The Eastern Shore, the area east of Chesapeake Bay, is flat with extensive wetlands. The maximum elevation there is 100 feet (30 metres) above sea level. The area west of the Chesapeake, called the Western Shore, is generally flat, but some low hills reach heights of 300 to 400 feet (90 to 120 metres). Most of the Coastal Plain is farmland with small rural communities, except for the urban areas of Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Salisbury, and Ocean City.
Maryland’s share of the Appalachian Mountains comprises a series of forested barriers, with many of the intervening valleys still uncleared. Backbone Mountain, hugging the West Virginia line, is the highest point in Maryland, at 3,360 feet (1,024 metres).
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To the south the Coastal Plain is sandy; to the north it is loamy and fertile. Its water edges—consisting of salt marshes, or wetlands—exasperate mapmakers as erosion periodically fills in a swamp or deletes an entire island: St. Clements Island (also called Blakiston Island), for example, is about one-tenth the size it was in 1634. The Chesapeake’s some two dozen estuarial tributaries provide the state with about 3,200 miles (5,150 km) of shoreline—subject to frequent change. The most important of nature-made revisions was an irruption of the ocean, during a storm in 1933, through Assateague Island, a sand barrier island on the Atlantic shore, dividing it in two. The northern portion, Fenwick Island, now has at its southern end the resort town of Ocean City, formerly located mid-island. The southern portion is now Assateague Island National Seashore, whose territory is shared with the state of Virginia. The inlet between the two islands has become a boon to Ocean City’s resort fishing fleet. It has been kept open by regular dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Piedmont Plateau has good farming soil except for belts of clay that are mined for brick kilns; from early colonial times, the exteriors of Maryland buildings have glowed with salmon-coloured brick made from these clay deposits. To the west and parallel to the fall line, the low Parr’s Ridge forms a drainage divide separating water flow east to the Chesapeake and southwest to the Potomac River.
The most salient feature of Maryland’s topography is Chesapeake Bay, which serves the port of Baltimore, divides the Eastern Shore from what was once called Maryland Main, and covers some 1,840 square miles (4,770 square km). On a summer weekend as many as 100,000 sailboats and powerboats may be seen on the water. But the bay has its drawbacks. Swimmers shun its brackish, murky water after the late-summer onset of billions of small stinging jellyfish, and the cross-bay bridges are often filled to capacity with the crush of summer weekenders going to and coming from the ocean beaches.
Dredging is also necessary to maintain the 50-foot- (15-metre-) deep ship channel to Baltimore and to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which connects the northern end of the Chesapeake to the Delaware River. The bay must also be protected against pollution by the municipalities, industries, and farms in its drainage area. The floor of the bay was once lined with oysters, but silt, pollutants, and hostile microorganisms have pushed the beds up into tributary rivers and diminished the yield even there. The largest catch is the blue crab, which arrives on dinner tables in such forms as crab soup, crab cakes, steamed hard-shell crabs, soft-shell crabs, and crab imperial. The bay, which was called by journalist and critic H.L. Mencken a “great big outdoor protein factory,” still affords a precarious living to hundreds of people who live and work on the water.
The Maryland State Flag. The design of the flag comes from the shield in the coat of arms of the Calvert family, the colonial proprietors of Maryland. George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, adopted a coat of arms that included a shield with alternating quadrants featuring the yellow-and-black colors of his paternal family and the red-and-white ...
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Jul 29, 2023 · The Maryland State Flag also features the colors red, white, black, and gold. These colors have significant meanings as well. Red symbolizes courage and bravery, white represents purity and innocence, black signifies perseverance and determination, and gold represents richness and excellence.
