Charles County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 166,617. The county seat is La Plata. The county was named for Charles Calvert (1637–1715), third Baron Baltimore. Charles County is part of the Washington metropolitan area and the Southern Maryland region.
The Potomac River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States that flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is 405 miles (652 km) long, with a drainage area of 14,700 square miles (38,000 km2), and is the fourth-largest river along the East Coast of the United States and the 21st-largest in the United States. More than 5 million people live within its watershed.
Port Tobacco, officially Port Tobacco Village, is a town in Charles County, in southern Maryland, United States. The population was 13 at the 2010 census, making Port Tobacco the smallest incorporated town in Maryland.
Raphael Semmes was an officer in the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War. He was previously a serving officer in the US Navy from 1826 to 1860.
Matthew Alexander Henson was an African American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together. He is best known for his participation in the 1908–1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson said he was the first of their party to reach the North Pole.
Southern Maryland, also referred to as SoMD, is a geographical, cultural and historic region in Maryland composed of the state's southernmost counties on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. According to the state of Maryland, the region includes all of Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary's counties and the southern portions of Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties. It is largely coterminous with the region of Maryland that is part of the Washington metropolitan area. Portions of the region are also part of the Baltimore Metropolitan Area and the California-Lexington Park Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 Census, the region had a population of 373,177. The largest community in Southern Maryland is Waldorf, with a population of 81,410 as of the 2020 Census.
CSS Teaser had been the aging Georgetown, D.C. tugboat York River until the beginning of the American Civil War, when she was taken into the Confederate States Navy and took part in the famous Battle of Hampton Roads. Later, she was captured by the United States Navy and became the first USS Teaser.
Point Lookout State Park is a public recreation area and historic preserve occupying Point Lookout, the southernmost tip of a peninsula formed by the confluence of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River in St. Mary's County, Maryland. The state park preserves the site of an American Civil War prisoner of war camp and the Point Lookout Light, which was built in 1830. It is the southernmost spot on Maryland's western shore, the coastal region on the western side of the Chesapeake Bay.
Nanjemoy Creek is a 13.1-mile-long (21.1 km) tidal tributary of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland, United States, located between Cedar Point Neck and Tayloe's Neck. Its watershed area is 73 square miles (190 km2), with 2% impervious surface in 1994.
Maryland Route 6 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The state highway runs 47.36 miles (76.22 km) from a dead end at the Potomac River in Riverside east to MD 235 in Oraville. MD 6 connects several small communities in southern Charles County and northern St. Mary's County with U.S. Route 301 in La Plata, the county seat of Charles County, and MD 5 in Charlotte Hall. The state highway also provides access to multiple historic sites around Port Tobacco, the original county seat of Charles County. MD 6 was one of the original highways numbered by the Maryland State Roads Commission in 1927. The state highway was constructed from La Plata to Riverside in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The La Plata–Charlotte Hall section of the highway was built in the mid-1920s. The portion of MD 6 east of Charlotte Hall was mostly built in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The final section of the state highway was completed in Oraville in 1940.
USS Anacostia was a steamer, constructed as a tugboat, that was first chartered by the United States Navy for service during the Paraguay crisis of the 1850s and then commissioned as a U.S. Navy ship. She later served prominently in the Union Navy during the American Civil War.
Maryland Route 224 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The highway runs 26.70 miles (42.97 km) from MD 6 at Riverside north to MD 227 at Pomonkey. MD 224 is a C-shaped route that mostly parallels the Potomac River through southwestern Charles County. The northern part of the highway passes through the villages of Chicamuxen, Rison, Marbury, and Mason Springs on the south side of Mattawoman Creek. MD 224 originally included Livingston Road north from Pomonkey through Accokeek, Piscataway, and Oxon Hill in southwestern Prince George's County to Washington, D.C. This highway connected Washington with Fort Washington and the Naval Proving Ground at Indian Head.
Chicamuxen Wildlife Management Area is a state Wildlife Management Area along Chickamuxen Creek near the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland. The area includes a variety of landforms from marshland to rolling forest. The area provides duck and white-tailed deer habitat. The area was the location of an encampment for General Joseph Hooker's troops during the American Civil War.
Purse State Park is a former Maryland state park located on the Potomac River in Charles County that has been subsumed into the 1,365-acre (552 ha) Nanjemoy Wildlife Management Area. As the Purse Area, the former park is known for fossil hunting on the beaches of Wades Bay at the southern end of the Nanjemoy WMA. Fossil discoveries have included shark teeth and Cibicides.
Mallows Bay is a small bay on the Maryland side of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland, United States. The bay is the location of what is regarded as the "largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere" and is described as a "ship graveyard."
The Nanjemoy Formation is a geologic formation pertaining to both the Wilcox Group and the Pamunkey Group of the eastern United States, stretching across the states of Virginia, Maryland, and District of Columbia. The formation crops out east of the Appalachians and dates back to the Paleogene period. Specifically to the Ypresian stage of the Eocene epoch, about 55 to 50 Ma or Wasatchian in the NALMA classification, defined by the contemporaneous Wasatch Formation of the Pacific US coast.
United States
Maryland 
Charles 
