Description of Maryland, US

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid-Atlantic region. Its southern and western borders are with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia; its northern and eastern borders are with Pennsylvania and the Atlantic Ocean; and its western and eastern borders are with Delaware and the Commonwealth of Virginia. While Annapolis serves as the state's capital, Baltimore is the state's largest city. A few more names for it are the Free State, the Old Line State, and the Chesapeake Bay State, to name a few. When Mary was born in France in 1660 she was referred to as Henrietta Maria, which is how she was referred to in England at the time of her coronation.

The Algonquin, Iroquois, and Siouian were among the Native American groups who lived in Maryland before Europeans arrived in the 16th century. Maryland was founded by George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, a Catholic convert who wanted to provide a safe haven for England's persecuted Catholics. Henrietta Maria was the name given to the settlement by King Charles I of England in 1632 when he handed Lord Baltimore a colonial charter. For Lord Baltimore, religious tolerance meant coexisting with people of all faiths, as opposed to the strict separation of church and state advocated by the Pilgrims and Puritans. According to the Maryland General Assembly, anyone who "reproached" a fellow Marylander for his or her religious beliefs was punished by law in 1649. However, religious conflict was common in the early years and Catholics remained a small minority, but in higher numbers than in any other English colony in the Americas at the time.

In the early days, villages and cities in Maryland were established around rivers and streams that flow into the Chesapeake Bay. Tobacco plantations and plantation-based industry were a major part of the region's economy. Indentured servitude, jail work, and African slavery all grew rapidly as a result of Britain's need for cheap labor. The current borders of Maryland were established in 1760 when a long-running boundary dispute with Pennsylvania was resolved. Representatives from Maryland took part in the events leading up to America's independence struggle, and in 1776, they signed the Declaration of Independence as a state. During the conflict, many of its residents performed critical roles in politics and the military. For the establishment of Washington, D.C., the state of Virginia gave up territory in 1790.

Due to its strategic location during the American Civil War, Maryland was able to stay in the Union despite being a slave state. Following the American Civil War, Maryland's seaports, railroads, and large influx of European immigrants all contributed to the state's involvement in the Industrial Revolution. After rapidly growing to about six million residents since the 1940s, this state now ranks among the top ten in population size. Due to its close proximity to Washington, D.C. and its wide range of industries, including manufacturing, retail services, public administration, real estate, higher education, information technology and defense contracting, health care and biotechnology, Maryland had the highest median household income in the United States in 2015, surpassing all other states in this regard. This state's major place in American history is reflected in the high concentration of historic landmarks per population.

Sixteen of Maryland's twenty-three counties, including Baltimore, have more than 4,000 miles of shoreline. Despite its diminutive size, the state has earned the moniker "America in Miniature" for its wide variety of climates and landscapes. Maryland is a fusion of the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, and Southern regions of the United States in terms of geography, culture, and history.

Geographical Description of Maryland

"America in Miniature" is a nickname given to Maryland because of the state's varied landscape. East of the Chesapeake Bay, there are sandy dunes covered in seagrass, low marshes rich in animals and bald cypress, gently sloping hills of oak woods in the Piedmont Region, and pine groves in the Maryland highlands.

As well as the Potomac River, Maryland is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north as well as New Jersey to the east, Delaware to the north, and then finally the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The District of Columbia, which sits on land that was formerly part of Montgomery and Prince George's counties and includes the Maryland city of Georgetown, forms a dividing line in the midst of this last border. In 1790, the United States donated this land to the federal government in order to build the District of Columbia. In 1846, Virginia reversed its half. The Eastern Shore refers to the counties east of the Chesapeake Bay, which roughly divides the state in half.

There are only a few areas in Maryland that are not part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed: Garrett County, the eastern half of Worcester County and a small portion of the state's northeastern corner. The Youghiogheny River flows through these three areas (which drains into the Delaware River watershed). There have been repeated proposals to rename Maryland the "Bay State," as Massachusetts has done for decades, because of the Chesapeake's importance to the state's geography and economics.

The highest point in Maryland is located on Backbone Mountain, at an elevation of 3,360 feet, near the West Virginia border and the headwaters of the North Branch of the Potomac (1,020 m). The Mason–Dixon line to the north and the northward-bending Potomac River to the south are fewer than two miles apart in western Maryland, nearly two-thirds of the way across the state (3.2 km).

Parts of Maryland are included in a number of official and unofficial geographical areas. So, the Delmarva Peninsula is made up of all of Delaware and its two Eastern Shore counties, as well as Virginia's and Maryland's Eastern Shore counties. However, parts of Maryland's westernmost counties are included in the Appalachian Mountains. The vast portion of the Baltimore–Washington corridor is located in the Coastal Plain, which is located just south of the Piedmont.

Economy of Maryland

There was $382.4 billion in gross state product in Maryland in 2016, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. As an alternative to just relying on economic growth indicators like GDP, Maryland has started using the Genuine Progress Indicator, a metric of well-being. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Maryland's median household income in 2013 was $72,483, making it the nation's wealthiest state, ahead of New Jersey and Connecticut. Two of the wealthiest counties in the country, Howard and Montgomery, are located in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Among the state's residents in 2013, 7.7 percent had an annual income of $1 million or more. In addition, at 7.8 percent, the state boasts the lowest poverty rate in the nation. The state's personal income per resident was $43,500 in 2006, making it the seventh-highest in the country. The state's unemployment rate was 4.6 percent as of March 2022.

To capitalize on its close proximity to the nation's capital and its high concentration of defense/aerospace and bio-research facilities, Maryland's economy relies heavily on these sectors, as well as on the presence of government satellite offices in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. At Fort Meade, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the United States Cyber Command, and the National Security Agency/Central Security Service are housed, among other agencies. There are also numerous educational and medical research centers in the state. Johns Hopkins University and its medical research facilities are, in fact, Baltimore's largest employment. Technical and administrative workers make about 25 percent of Maryland's workforce. Maryland's proximity to the D.C. metropolitan area, where federal government office jobs are plentiful, is a factor in the state's low unemployment rate.

Regardless of the industry's monetary size, no subsector generates more than 20% of the total value. Examples of typical production methods include electronics, computers, and chemicals. International rivalry, bankruptcy, and merger activity have taken a toll on the primary metals sector, which previously housed the world's largest steel plant at Sparrows Point. The Glenn Martin Company (now a division of Lockheed Martin) employed about 40,000 people in its airplane manufacturing during World War II.

The vast majority of non-building material mining takes place in the western part of the state, where coal is situated. In the mid-19th century, brownstone quarries in the eastern United States produced the bulk of the building materials for Baltimore and Washington, D.C.'s distinctive architecture. Gold mining was once common in Maryland, particularly around Washington, but these enterprises have since faded away.