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When first seen by settlers from a rather worked over England 

 the natural riches of this estuary, Chesapeake Bay, were mind boggling. 

 Deep fertile soil, fish, shellfish, waterfowl, and game surpassed anything 

 known in Europe for the preceding thousand years. Contemporary descriptions 

 seem Utopian by today's standards. It couldn't last, of course, and in a 

 few generations (notice that it took several generation s) tobacco farming 

 had severely depleted soil fertility and sent countless tons first of 

 topsoil, then of subsoil cascading down the runs, the creeks, and the 

 rivers, silting up deep harbors, destroying bottom habitat, browning 

 once clear flowing waters. Were it not for the deep sedimentary soils 

 and low relief of the coastal plain, the deep weathered-in-place soils 

 of the piedmont, the long growing season, and the even distribution of 

 rainfall, man's impact over the last 350 years would be much more apparent. 



Nevertheless, we have inherited some magnificent fragments of the 

 earlier landscape. Isolated by the complex embayments of the drowned 

 Susquehanna, much of the region has changed very little in the past 50 

 years. But with the extremely rapid growth of suburban complexes around 

 Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond, the once spacious Chesapeake Bay 

 Region is filling up. Marinas replace tidal marshes, isolated necks 

 become coveted subdivisions, new roads over new bridges make once remote 

 areas suddenly accessible and desirable for. the commuter or second home 

 owner, and profitable for the land speculator. 



