Queen Anne's County is located on the Eastern Shore of the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2010 census, the population was 47,798. Its county seat and most populous municipality is Centreville. The census-designated place of Stevensville is the county's most populous place. The county is named for Queen Anne of Great Britain, who reigned when the county was established in 1706 during the colonial period.
The Delmarva Peninsula, or simply Delmarva, is a large peninsula on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by the vast majority of the state of Delaware and parts of the Eastern Shore regions of Maryland and Virginia. The peninsula is 170 miles (274 km) long. In width, it ranges from 70 miles (113 km) near its center, to 12 miles (19 km) at the isthmus on its northern edge, to less near its southern tip of Cape Charles. It is bordered by the Chesapeake Bay on the west, Pocomoke Sound on the northwest, the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is a major dual-span bridge in the U.S. state of Maryland. Spanning the Chesapeake Bay, it connects the state's rural Eastern Shore region with the urban Western Shore, between Stevensville and the capital city of Annapolis. The original span, opened in 1952 and with a length of 4.3 miles (6.9 km), was the world's longest continuous over-water steel structure. The parallel span was added in 1973. The bridge is officially named the Gov. William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge after William Preston Lane Jr. who, as the 52nd Governor of Maryland, initiated its construction in the late 1940s finally after decades of political indecision and public controversy.
Kent Island is the largest island in the Chesapeake Bay and a historic place in Maryland. To the east, a narrow channel known as the Kent Narrows barely separates the island from the Delmarva Peninsula, and on the other side, the island is separated from Sandy Point, an area near Annapolis, by roughly four miles (6.4 km) of water. At only four miles wide, the main waterway of the bay is at its narrowest at this point and is spanned here by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The Chester River runs to the north of the island and empties into the Chesapeake Bay at Kent Island's Love Point. To the south of the island lies Eastern Bay. The United States Census Bureau reports that the island has 31.62 square miles (81.90 km2) of land area.
Maryland Route 8 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known for most of its length as Romancoke Road, the state highway runs 8.37 miles (13.47 km) from Romancoke Pier in Romancoke north to MD 18 in Stevensville. MD 8 is the main north–south highway of Kent Island in western Queen Anne's County. The state highway is also the first highway encountered on U.S. Route 50 and US 301 east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. South of Matapeake, MD 8 is paralleled by the Kent Island South Trail.
Maryland Route 404 (MD 404) is a major highway on Maryland's Eastern Shore in the United States. It runs 24.61 miles (39.61 km) from MD 662 in Wye Mills on the border of Queen Anne's and Talbot counties, southeast to the Delaware state line in Caroline County, where the road continues as Delaware Route 404 (DE 404) to Five Points. The Maryland and Delaware state highways together cross the width of the Delmarva Peninsula and serve to connect the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and U.S. Route 50 (US 50) with the Delaware Beaches. Along the way, MD 404 passes through mostly farmland and woodland as well as the towns of Queen Anne, Hillsboro, and Denton. The route is a four-lane divided highway between US 50 and east of Denton, with the remainder of the route a two-lane undivided road.
Maryland Route 802 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known as Batts Neck Road, the state highway runs 1.02 miles (1.64 km) as a north–south highway between junctions with MD 8 in Normans on Kent Island. MD 802 is the old alignment of MD 8 through Normans. The state highway was assigned after MD 8 was relocated by the early 1970s.
Maryland Route 33 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The state highway runs 23.17 mi (37.29 km) from Tilghman Island east to Washington Street in Easton. MD 33 connects Easton, the county seat of Talbot County, with all communities on the peninsula that juts west into the Chesapeake Bay between the Miles River and Eastern Bay on the north and the Tred Avon River and Choptank River on the south. The state highway passes through the historic town of Saint Michaels, home of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, and enters Tilghman Island by passing over Knapps Narrows on the busiest bascule drawbridge in the United States.
The Raritan Bayshore region of New Jersey is a subregion of the larger Jersey Shore. It is the area around Raritan Bay from The Amboys to Sandy Hook, in Monmouth and Middlesex counties, including the towns of Perth Amboy, South Amboy, Sayreville, Old Bridge Township, Aberdeen Township, Keyport, Union Beach, Keansburg, Middletown, Atlantic Highlands, and Highlands. It is the northernmost part of the Jersey Shore, located just south of New York City. At Keansburg is a traditional amusement park while at Sandy Hook are found ocean beaches. The Sadowski Parkway beach area in Perth Amboy, which lies at the mouth of the Raritan River, was deemed the "Riviera of New Jersey" by local government. In the last years many of the beaches on the Bayshore area have been rediscovered and upgraded as the quality of the water continues to improve.
U.S. Route 301 (US 301) in the state of Maryland is a major highway that runs from Delaware to the Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River into Virginia. It passes through three of Maryland's four main regions: the Eastern Shore, the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, and Southern Maryland. US 301 serves mainly as a bypass of Baltimore and Washington from Delaware to Virginia.
The Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry Company ran both passenger and automobile ferry service across the Chesapeake Bay from 1919 to 1952. The initial service was between Annapolis, Maryland, on the western shore and Claiborne, Maryland, on the eastern shore. In July 1930, a second shorter route was added between Annapolis, Maryland, and Matapeake on Kent Island, Maryland. Business increased so rapidly at that point that another ferryboat was added. In May, 1938 the Claiborne route was changed to run from Claiborne to Romancoke, Maryland, on the lower end of Kent Island, from which passengers could then connect to the Matapeake to Annapolis run. In 1943, the Annapolis United States Naval Academy absorbed the property where the ferry terminal had been, so service was switched from Annapolis to a new terminal at Sandy Point on the western shore. By May 1951, the ferries were handling 1 million vehicles and 2 million passengers annually. Ferry service stopped running in 1952 when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was completed.
The Queen Anne’s Railroad was a railroad that ran between Love Point, Maryland and Lewes, Delaware and was connected to Baltimore via ferry across the Chesapeake Bay. The Queen Anne's Railroad company was formed in Maryland in 1894, and received legislative authorization from Delaware in February 1895. The railroad's original western terminus was in Queenstown, Maryland, and was moved via a 13-mile (21 km) extension to Love Point in 1902, which shortened the ferry trip to Baltimore.
The Cross Island Trail is a rail trail in Queen Anne's County, Maryland occupying a section of the abandoned Queen Anne's Railroad corridor that traverses the width of Kent Island. It was completed in 2001 and is part of the American Discovery Trail.
Matapeake is an unincorporated community located south of Stevensville on Kent Island, Maryland, United States.
Sandy Point State Park is a public recreation area on Chesapeake Bay, located at the western end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The state park is known for the popularity of its swimming beach, with annual attendance exceeding one million visitors. The park grounds include the Sandy Point Farmhouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The historic Sandy Point Shoal Lighthouse stands in about five feet of water some 1,000 yards (910 m) east of the park's beach.
Janes Island State Park is a public recreation area on Chesapeake Bay lying adjacent to the city of Crisfield in Somerset County, Maryland. The state park features some 30 miles (48 km) of marked water trails through the island's salt marsh leading to isolated pristine beaches. The park is managed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
Maryland Route 908 is a collection of unsigned state highways in the U.S. state of Maryland. These five highways are service roads that parallel and provide access to U.S. Route 50 and US 301 along their western approach to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge; the highways also provide access to Sandy Point State Park. The first modern highway from Cape St. Claire to Skidmore was constructed in the late 1920s and replaced by the modern alignment of US 50 in the late 1940s. The frontage roads on either side of the U.S. Highway were constructed in the early 1950s. The mainline segments of MD 908 assumed their present form when US 50 and US 301 were upgraded to a freeway in the early 1990s.
Fort Smallwood Park is a county park in northeastern Anne Arundel County near Riviera Beach and Pasadena, Maryland, United States. It is located on the outer Patapsco River as it meets the Chesapeake Bay.
The Broadneck Peninsula is an area in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The area is north of the Severn River, South of the Magothy River and west of the Chesapeake Bay. At the lower end of the Broadneck Peninsula is the 4.3 mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
