ST. MARY'S COUNTY. 



St. Mary's is the southernmost of the group of counties lying on 

 the western shore of Chesapeake Bay and known as southern Mary- 

 land. It is bordered on the east by the Patuxent River and Chesa- 

 peake Bay, and on the south by the Potomac. The St. Mary's River, 

 at the head of which the first settlement was made in Maryland in 

 1634, forms the county's principal inland water course. The main 

 topographic feature is a low plateau extending from Point Lookout, 

 at the most southern end of the county, in a northeasterly direction to 

 the Charles County line, a distance of 42 miles and the extreme length 

 of the county. Along this plateau the highest elevations are about 

 200 feet, the slope from this ridge being eastward toward the Patux- 

 ent, and southwest, at tidewater, to the Potomac. 



This central plateau was called "The Forest" in early days, since 

 it was almost entirely wooded, with the settlements and cleared areas 

 largely confined to the shores of the Patuxent, Potomac, and their 

 tributaries. As the settlements advanced inland, the section known 

 as "The Forest" gradually lost its first significance, and the wooded 

 areas become interspersed generally with cultivated land, so that at 

 the present forest and farm land are almost equally divided, the only 

 principal exception being adjacent to some of the streams, where there 

 is a larger amount of cleared than forest land. 



The Forests. 



The present wooded area of St. Mary's County amounts to 51 per 

 cent, a' very large amount, and one that is only exceeded by three 

 others in the State. Fifty years ago, however, there was much more 

 land under cultivation than today. The original forests were almost 

 entirely of hardwood, but the abandonment of so much farm land at 

 the close of the Civil War has gradually changed conditions in this 

 county, accounting in marked degree for the larger proportion of pine 

 in the present forests. 



The southeastern half of the county has the largest amounts of 

 pine, because it was in this section that so much of the former farm 

 land was permitted to grow up again in forest, and the prolific, light- 

 seeded pine was the species to take possession of the abandoned clear- 

 ings. The forests of the county may be divided into three types — 



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