Worcester County is the easternmost county of the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 52,460. Its county seat is Snow Hill.
Ocean City, officially the Town of Ocean City, is an Atlantic resort town in Worcester County, Maryland, along the East Coast of the United States. The population was 6,844 at the 2020 U.S. census, although during summer weekends the city hosts between 320,000 and 345,000 vacationers and up to eight million visitors annually. During the summer, Ocean City becomes the second most populated municipality in Maryland, after Baltimore. It is part of the Salisbury metropolitan area as defined by the United States Census Bureau.
Sinepuxent or Sinepuxent Town was a village in Worcester County, Maryland, located on Sinepuxent Neck across Sinepuxent Bay from the barrier island of Assateague. The village was destroyed by a hurricane in 1818 and never rebuilt. Its location arose in large part from its convenience to ocean-going ships: an inlet—Sinepuxent Inlet—allowed access through Assateague Island from the Atlantic Ocean to Sinepuxent Bay, until it was closed by the same hurricane that destroyed the village.
Verrazzano Bridge or Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is a suspension bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island in New York City.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a part of the U.S. state of Maryland that lies mostly on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay. Nine counties are normally included in the region. The Eastern Shore is part of the larger Delmarva Peninsula that Maryland shares with Delaware and Virginia.
Assateague Island is a 37-mile (60 km) long barrier island located off the eastern coast of the Delmarva Peninsula facing the Atlantic Ocean. The northern two-thirds of the island is in Maryland, and the southern third is in Virginia.
Assateague Island National Seashore is a unit of the National Park Service system of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Located on the East Coast along the Atlantic Ocean in Maryland and Virginia, Assateague Island is the largest natural barrier island ecosystem in the Middle Atlantic states region that remains predominantly unaffected by human development. Located within a three-hour drive to the east and south of Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia major metropolitan areas plus north of the several clustered smaller cities around Hampton Roads harbor of Virginia with Newport News, Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. The National Seashore offers a setting in which to experience a dynamic barrier island and to pursue a multitude of recreational opportunities. The stated mission of the park is to preserve and protect “unique coastal resources and the natural ecosystem conditions and processes upon which they depend, provide high-quality resource-based recreational opportunities compatible with resource protection and educate the public as to the values and significance of the area”.
Assateague State Park is a public recreation area in Worcester County, Maryland, located at the north end of Assateague Island, a barrier island bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and Sinepuxent Bay on the west. The state park is bordered on both its north and south sides by Assateague Island National Seashore and is reached via the Verrazano Bridge which carries Maryland Route 611 across Sinepuxent Bay. The park offers wildlife viewing, beach activities, and camping facilities. It is managed by the Maryland Park Service of the larger Maryland Department of Natural Resources with the support of volunteers working under the auspices of the non-profit Friends of Assateague State Park.
Maryland Route 611 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known as Stephen Decatur Highway, the state highway runs 8.51 miles (13.70 km) from Assateague Island north to U.S. Route 50 in West Ocean City. MD 611 is named for Stephen Decatur, the U.S. naval officer of the early 19th century who was born in nearby Berlin. The state highway provides access to Assateague State Park and Assateague Island National Seashore via the Verrazano Bridge named for Giovanni da Verrazzano. MD 611 was first paved in West Ocean City in the mid-1930s. The highway was extended south to MD 376 at Lewis Corner in the 1940s. A ferry crossed Sinepuxent Bay to Assateague Island from the southern end of the county highway that continued south from Lewis Corner until MD 611 was extended across the Verrazano Bridge in the mid-1960s.
The Verrazano Bridge in Maryland is a bridge on Maryland Route 611 over Sinepuxent Bay that connects Assateague Island to the mainland.
Chincoteague Bay is a lagoon between the Atlantic barrier islands of Assateague and Chincoteague and the mainland of Worcester County, Maryland and northern Accomack County, Virginia. At the bay's northern end, where it narrows between Assateague and Sinepuxent Neck, it becomes Sinepuxent Bay; Chincoteague Bay's southern end drains into the Atlantic Ocean via Queen Sound and Chincoteague Inlet. No major river flows into Chincoteague Bay—its largest tributaries are Newport Creek in Worcester County and Swans Gut Creek in Accomack County.
Sinepuxent Bay Wildlife Management Area is a state wildlife management area (WMA) of Maryland that consists of several islands in Sinepuxent Bay, Isle of Wight Bay, and Chincoteague Bay in Worcester County.
Isle of Wight Bay is a lagoon that separates part of mainland Worcester County, Maryland from the midtown part of Ocean City, also in Worcester County. To the north, it connects to the Assawoman Bay just south of the Assawoman Bay Bridge, and to the south it connects to the Sinepuxent Bay at the north end of West Ocean City where the bay narrows between the Thoroughfare channel and Mallard Island. The major tributary of Isle of Wight Bay is the St. Martin's River; other tributaries include Turville Creek, Manklin Creek, and Herring Creek.
The Battle of Cockle Creek, October 5, 1861, was a minor naval engagement off Chincoteague, Virginia early in the American Civil War.
The Maryland Coastal Bays Program (MCBP) is one of the 28 United States National Estuary Programs created in the 1987 Amendments to the Clean Water Act. The program, organized by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, is a non-regulatory federal-state-local collaboration working to restore water quality and conserve the natural resources of the bay system adjacent to Ocean City, Maryland and Assateague Island. The partnership works with municipalities, non-profits, governmental agencies, and businesses; and helps develop, find funding for, and implement projects and programs aimed at improving the health of the estuary. The partnership either directly implements these projects, or administers and manages grants, holds educational workshops and highlights project results.
Fenwick Island is a barrier island along the Atlantic Ocean in Delaware and Maryland in the United States. It contains the communities of South Bethany and Fenwick Island in Delaware along with Ocean City, Maryland. Until 1933, it was attached to Assateague Island to the south. That year, a hurricane carved an inlet between the two landforms, which was made permanent. If not for the Assawoman Canal, constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1891, the island would be attached to the mainland of Delaware.
The Virginia Barrier Islands are a continuous chain of long, narrow, low-lying, sand and scrub barrier islands separated from one another by narrow inlets and from the mainland by a series of shallow marshy tidal bays along the entire coast of the Virginia end of the Delmarva Peninsula. Several of these islands were once significantly larger, covered with pine forests, and inhabited. After the completion of the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad in the late 19th Century, at least five lavish hunting and fishing clubs were established on Virginia's barrier islands and they became a playground for wealthy sportsmen from Northeastern cities who would arrive by train. US President Grover Cleveland visited Hog Island to hunt waterfowl and go fishing in the early 1890s.
Dog and Bitch Island is depending on the sources one or two islands in Worcester County, Maryland, in the United States. It is located within the Isle of Wight Bay. The island is small in size and marshy. In 2014 the federal Army Corps of Engineers pumped 18,000 cubic yards of material from navigation channel dredging operations onto the island to improve migratory bird habitat.
Ilia Fehrer was an environmentalist and member of the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame most widely known for fighting to preserve Assateague Island, Chincoteague Bay, and other Chesapeake Bay coastal regions from destructive urban development.
