The Chesapeake Bay is the largest bay in the United States, located in the mid-Atlantic region between the Eastern Shore of Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The 200-mile-long bay stretches from the Susquehanna River in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the south.
The Chesapeake Bay derives its name from the Algonquian village name Chesepiooc, meaning "at a big river." The Chesapeake's shores were home to the Powhatan, Piscatawa, and Nanticoke peoples, and the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed past the bay in 1524 before Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon sent an expedition out from Hispaniola in 1525 and reached the mouth of the bay, which the Spanish called the Bahía de Santa María. In 1570, Spanish Jesuits established a mission at Ajacan on one of the Chesapeake tributaries. The English arrived in the early 17th century; Captain John Smith explored and mapped the bay between 1607 and 1609, deciding that, "Heaven and earth have never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation." From 1640 to 1675, the English Civil War resulted in a mass migration of Cavaliers and their servants from Southern England to the Chesapeake Bay region. The bay was the site of the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781 during the American Revolutionary War, while the British Royal Navy established the Chesapeake as a "British lake" from their base at Tangier Island during the War of 1812. The bay was once known for its bounty of crabs and oysters, but impaired water quality and the overharvesting of shellfish led to a decline in the fishing industry since the mid-20th century.
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