When a comet-like object hit the very spot where the town of Cape Charles would be built about 35 million years later, it plowed through the earth’s surface and drilled downward for over a mile. Immediately, all that remained of the bolide was cinders while in the same second a plume of rock and ash echoed back into the atmosphere. Some of the debris fell to earth again thousands of miles away. Most filled a crater 55 miles wide.
Although the bolide did not form the bay that we call Chesapeake, it set into motion the processes that would allow it to form. Millions of years passed and sea levels rose and fell in tune with the wobble of the earth. Water turned to ice and ice turned to water. On the edge of the continent where the bolide crashed, the havoc that it created squeezed down and settled tight beneath the liquid-solid tug-of-war. Sand, silt, and clay was pushed, pulled, dropped, and layered over it.
About two to three million years ago, melting glaciers carved a north-south channel through the surface sediment of new-formed continental coastal plain. The channel’s flow, encouraged by the slowly, slowly subsiding rubble, directed water toward the sink as it spilled out to the ocean. From the southwest, gravity pulled another ancient stream toward the crater before it too merged into the sea.
By fifteen thousand years ago, the soft and fertile earth all around filled with hardwood trees. The warming climate promoted the formation of other rivers, like one named Pamunkey by descendants of the basin’s first human population. The land around the bay sprouted and was carved by many other streams.
Four thousand years ago, the Bay dubbed Tschiswapeki by the first people assumed the shape we know today. The Spanish named it Bahia de Santa Maria in the 1500s. Other European explorers recorded the bay’s name as Chesepiooc. The main stem of the estuary drained from the river John Smith noted on his 1612 map as the Sasquesahanough. The current rippled southward for 190 miles. Salt water met fresh waters that flowed from stream channels. The main body of the bay spread to a maximum width of 35 miles, pooled at an average depth of 22 feet, and swirled above land lowered by the ancient bolide.
Wetlands and marshes all around teamed with fish and shellfish that coaxed the first people to hunt and fish. One thousand years ago, Woodland Indians settled around the great shellfish bay and planted fields of corn, beans, and squash. When Europeans began to explore the locale about 500 years ago, the native population that watched and listened from as many as 200 villages was estimated to be 26,000 to 34,000 strong.
Soon enough, the English settlers deemed the land surrounding the great shellfish bay to be excellent for their plantations and farms. They renamed the watery highways that led to their homes after their monarchs, the rivers they recalled from their youth, their religious orientation, and themselves. Their first colonial capital cities were sited near rivers they named James, York, St. Mary’s, and Severn.
All around the bay, Europeans settlers grew tobacco. English import records evince the rapid expansion of agriculture. Ships filled their holes with harvests. Imports grew from near 500,000 pounds in the 1630s to 15 million pounds by the end of the 1660s to 28 million pounds by the end of the century. From 1650 to 1750, the European-settler population grew from an estimated 13,000 to 380,000 people.
By 1776, the population of colonists living around the shores of the Chesapeake reached 700,000. Before and after the American Revolution, settlers pushed west and named the multitude of finger streams that traced to the headwaters of the principle Chesapeake Bay Rivers. Waves of new settlers from the borderlands, forests, and fens of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland staked their claims using names that recalled their experience.
By 1800, the Chesapeake Bay region’s population reached one million. Steamboats replaced sailing ships on the Chesapeake’s Rivers beginning in the 1820s. Canals were built and named. They eased the way for commerce.
By the turn of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the Chesapeake Bay region’s population neared 3 million. Motorized transport replaced most river traffic.
One hundred years later, with its watershed population passing 16 million, the Chesapeake Bay is plied by giant tankers, remnant watermen, sport fishermen, weekend sailors, riffle-riding kayakers, and bird-watching canoeists.
Since the time of the first English settlers, it is estimated that the Chesapeake Bay has lost half of its forested shorelines and more than half of its wetlands. Excess nitrogen and sediment pollution that runs off of the land threatens the health of wildlife, fish, and shellfish. Fertilizer, animal manure, sewage treatment plant effluent, toxic substances, and particulates from polluted air end up in the water. The water is dirty and unhealthy.
We the people, who enjoy water views and pleasant Mid-Atlantic climate, might do well to stop to wonder about this. When we look around us, we see that the Bay is everywhere. We realize that we are not the first to love this place. We are not the first, but we have arrived at a point in time where we need to pay greater attention. If we do not, we may hasten the end of thousands of years of our species habitation here.
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