Washington DC, Maryland MLS Search

Matt Green 240-418-0599 E-Mail

Montgomery County Maryland

Bethesda Chevy Chase Gaithersburg Germantown Potomac Rockville Silver Spring

Weichert Realtors 10320 River Road, Potomac, MD 20854

One of the great delights of travel is immersion in a culture — in its history, foods, and the esthetics and economics of landscapes. This is certainly true along the route of the Potomac Heritage Trail in southern Maryland. You can learn about how tobacco and seafood have shaped the economy, land and communities. And you can discover how a region reinvents itself through the diverse array of foods and farm products available today. Along the way are pick-your-own farms and farm stands, markets and restaurants featuring local produce. To help you turn a day trip into an excursion, there are bed and breakfasts and country inns.

The route from Point Lookout, at the mouth of the Potomac River, to Oxon Hill, just south of Washington, D.C., is covered in six hikes. Most of the hiking and walking opportunities are separated by significant stretches of roadway — ground most people will cover by car in ten to fifteen minute interludes. While not the traditional way of traveling a trail, it does allow more time for stopping at farm stands and heritage sites, compared to bicycling or hiking — and for hiking at the parks and sites along the route. Or you can make an easy two or three day outing bicycling the road walks and exploring the many natural areas and heritage sites on foot.

However you travel, you will never be far from water. Nanjemoy Creek and the St. Mary's, Wicomico and Port Tobacco rivers are renowned Potomac tributaries that define the region and tell the stories of colonial America's earliest days. Traveling north toward Washington, D.C., you can see that Southern Maryland's heritage is more than colonial times. Nature is the star of the show, featuring shore grasses, wide river mouths, and wildlife characteristic of the Chesapeake Bay.

Contrasted with the tumbling tributaries upriver and the rugged mountains where the Potomac Heritage Trail traces high into the Allegheny Mountains, you can see that the trail and the river are the threads of continuity among the several million people who live in the region. They may share more in common than this corridor, but it is hard to imagine anything more significant.

Two other influences on the landscape are noteworthy: The U.S. military and American Indians. Military installations have been present almost for as long as the European settlers. The Patuxent River Naval Air Station and the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head and Stump Neck are significant features of the culture and local economy. Interestingly, some of the largest natural areas of Southern Maryland are adjacent to the bases. So the traveler, the bases are passed largely unnoticed.

The opposite is true for the people who were here before European settlement. With the abundance of places and streams bearing names such as Nanjemoy, Mattawoman, Wicomoco, Chicamuxen, one would expect a richly interpreted history of the region's original people. Yet little remains on the land itself, either in the way of landmarks, present-day settlement, or literature. Even the meanings and origins of many names are largely lost.

The best known people of the area were the Conoy, also called the Piscataway for the village they inhabited on the river. They spoke an Algonquian language and were closely related to the Nanticoke of the Chesapeake's Eastern Shore and the Kanawha of West Virginia. The Patuxent, whose principal village was in today's Calvert County, also were also associated with the Conoy.

The Potawomeck, Wicomoco, and others in the Powhatan confederacy from the Virginia side of the river, came as visitors and appear to have been prolific place namers. According to the chronicles of Captain John Smith's exploration of 1608, the place names they offered up are some of the ones that survive today — albeit in forms transformed through time. provide perhaps the most comprehensive picture of the region at the moment of contact with Europeans.

The Susquehanna, who spoke an Iroquois language, pushed into the region in the mid seventeenth century, warring with the Piscataway people, colonists, and just about everyone else. Their history lies primarily north along the river that bears their name. Their arrival to the Potomac coincided with the early days of English settlement.

The word Potomac has been prescribed various meanings. Among them are "bring into" and "where they are brought to." Whether accurate or not, one that seems appropriate today is "where they come together," or gathering place. The lower Potomac has been such a place. It drew the original peoples to fish, the settlers to farm and trade, and as attracted generations of Americans to enjoy the natural beauty of the river, its tributaries and the landscape.

And while the river is naturally occurring, so too are our desires to live within its influence. As others have asked before us, what would be left to enjoy if we all made such a choice? A journey along the PHT is also a journey through many conservation stories — historic landmarks preserved by handfuls of citizens, small towns finding new economic engines through their heritage, shorelines conserved for public use. The most comprehensive efforts involve the State of Maryland and various federal agencies and citizen groups in two locations: Chapman's Landing and Douglas Point, both of which will provide increased public access to the river environment.

So while you enjoy the view, consider this: Conservation and economy go hand-in-hand in Southern Maryland. In places where land has been preserved for public enjoyment, it was done so through the often complex, and always painstaking give-and-take among many interests and the persistence of people.

This site sponsored by Matthew Green of Weichert, Realtors