First, what is the geographic name of the peninsula on which Delaware and eastern Maryland (and a bit that’s Virginia’s) are located? The piece of land bounded on the east by Delaware Bay and on the west by Chesapeake Bay? And second, why are there no really large cities on this peninsula, despite that fact that many large urban areas (DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia) are in the same general region?
I’ve heard it referred to as the DelMarVa peninsula. I assume that there are no major cities on it because of the difficulties of transportation on and off the peninsula.
Do you mean Delmarva? Why no large cities? Well… no easy access to the rest of the region, due to the bay, I suppose. Philly is pretty close by and serves all the big city needs. I don’t think there are any natural harbors or resources that would cause a big city to develop in that region. As far as I know it is really good for growing corn, beaches, and speed traps.
Maryland native here. Billdo got it: Delmarva. Although I have to say, as someone living in “mainland” Maryland, I don’t use or hear the term very often. (In fact, I started drafting a post that said there was no such term, and almost posted it before remembering Delmarva.)
Apart from that, the Maryland portion is known as the Eastern Shore. The Virginia section is the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Delaware is just Delaware.
While the Eastern Shore in still primarily a tertiary market, the region is slowly becoming more metropolitan. This is one of the reasons our Salisbury, MD based commercial real estate group recently changed it’s affiliation to a large national firm.
Right – the main axis of movement along the NE corridor, ever since colonial times, cuts across the northern “root” of the peninsula, between Baltimore and Philadelphia. The size of the water spaces between the southern peninsula and anywhere around it meant also that until mid-20th century it was a ground transport cul-de-sac, so no major stopping points to anywhere would grow within it. Heck, a canal was dug across that “root” so that coastal shipping could go from the Delaware to the Chesapeake w/o having to go around. Analogously, southern NJ did not develop any large cities, either, except peripherally to Philadelphia, and in the rest of NJ the larger conurbations were historically peripheral to NYC or were along the axis of transport between NY and Phila. (Trenton). The early Delaware settlements (Christiana) were all in the northern part of DE; the main port in Delaware is all the way up in Wilmington. Another geographic determinant in the development/nondevelopment of cities in the area is the “Fall Line”, the points in the Eastern Seaboard where you have, well, falls in the rivers, which were very useful to establishing mills (and could mean the upper reach of non-canal navigation). The Delmarva is mostly coastal flatland all the way through, with barrier islands on the Atlantic side and shallow estuarine formations on the Bay side.
So no real reason for a major city to evolve in that space under “old economy” models; only relatively recently does improved mobility and accessways lead to it being discovered as an underutilized space right next to the Phila-B’more-DC-Norfolk axis.
And to add another point or two to what others have said, if you look at a map, you’ll see that apart from the northern land access, there are only two ways to get to the peninsula from the west or the south: the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis and the 23-mile-long (!) Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel that connects the Hampton Roads area of the mainland with Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Never having lived down Norfolk way, I don’t know how clogged the Bridge-Tunnel gets, but I can tell you that the Bay Bridge often experiences multi-hour, ten-mile-plus backups during the summer when millions of Marylanders head “danny ayshun*” for the weekend.
Although there has been growth over there, I’m sure the fact of these major bottlenecks has restricted it significantly.
Baltimorese for “down to the ocean.”
I don’t think the Virginia part of it has a name, since it’s so small, especially compared to the rest of the state. MD has roughly half its area on the peninsula, DE is entirely on it, but VA just has the tip, compared to the rest of VA, which is (I would guess) hundreds of times as large.
Captain Carrot writes:
> MD has roughly half its area on the peninsula . . .
It’s slightly more than a third of the area.
The VA part of Delmarva stands for Virginia. Del=Delaware; Mar=Maryland; VA=Virginia.
The area doesn’t have a major city, but it is filling up with sprawl and bridge traffic is becoming nightmarish.
It also depends how one defines the Delmarva peninsula. The power company by the same name which covers the area includes Wilmington, DE and S. NJ. By political maps, it may extend west to the Susquehanna. Many would say it spans north to the start of the DE Valley - which one may define with some overlap into the Delmarva peninsula.
I disagree with the “mainland Marylander”. The Delmarva peninsula is a well-known name. Eastern Shore is a term which refers to one side of the Chesapeake Bay which excludes DE and therefore is a subset of the Delmarva Peninsula.
The OP forgets that New Castle was once the Capital of DE, not Dover. Either way, both show the importance of the Delmarva Peninsula. The town of New Castle is the center of the arc which forms the top “semicircular” portion of DE. (This is the piece of DE whose circumference takes a bite into PA’s horizontal southern border.)
Just a different spin on the subject from one who has spent much time in the greater area in question. - Jinx
The biggest reason there are no big cities in Delmarva has to do with ports and bays. Philadelphia is an existing port on the Delaware Bay, and Baltimore is an existing port on the Chesapeake. Ports on the ocean beaches of Delaware or Maryland would be impractical compared to these calm-water ports, so the bays are the only real choice for shipping. Both cities are on the mainland, and have plenty of road and rail access to the rest of the country. Compare that to Salisbury MD, on the Wicomico River, which was the peninsula’s major port for a long time. Anything shipped there had to travel overland to the north to reach the mainland, and in doing so it had to go right past Philadelphia.
Overland transport in the peninsula has always been about right for the population – very limited. In the last ten years or so, Delaware has finally built an interstate-quality road that runs nearly the length of the state, but before that, there were no interstates on the peninsula. “What about I-95,” people ask, pretty much whenever I point this out, and the answer is that it barely clips one edge of the state. I’m sorry you had to pay the tolls, but you also got the benefits of having an interstate, which pretty much nobody south of the C&D ever has. US-13 and US-113 were faster roads, but they are still four lanes total and six or seven stoplights in each town.
I was estimating with a mental map. I’m surprised I was that close. It makes no difference to my point either way.
And that wasn’t what I was talking about. I said that the Virginia area of the Delmarva peninsula doesn’t have a name for itself. I’m well aware of the origin of the peninsula’s name.
By contrast with Virginia, the Maryland section is known as the Eastern Shore, as has been mentioned previously, and Delaware is arguably located entirely on the peninsula, so its name is no different. Virginia’s part has no name to itself, it merely contributes a syllable to the name of the whole.
I’ve always known it as “the Eastern Short of Virginia.” If you talk about “the Eastern Shore,” you’re referring to Maryland. But IME, the Eastern Shore of Virginia (while not terribly catchy) is understood by people who live around here.
I’ll take your word for it, I’m just saying I’ve never heard it.
Here is a link for your reading pleasure.
Somewhere, I have a book I purchased in Maryland, on the Delmarva Peninsula, titled something like, “History of the Delmarva Peninsula.” I also have a book, bought in the same place, with a bunch of interesting day trips in the area, with the words Delmarva Peninsula in the title. It’s not that uncommon a name, though probably losing steam in our current hustle-bustle life.
It has no big cities for a good reason: no place on the peninsula (which some argue is now an island, thanks to the canal across the isthmus) is on the way from someplace to someplace, nor is the peninsula a very large producer of much of anything requiring a large labor force. Thank-goodness; can you imagine Philly in the middle of Delaware? Ewwww. :eek:
As a resident of the Eastern Shore, let’s just say that it’s kind of isolated here. Before the Bay Bridge went up in the 50’s, it was very isolated. A city the size of Salisbury (around 30,000 now) met the needs of the sparse population up to that point. There was really no need for a big city, so one did not develop. Salisbury is growing now, but I doubt it will get too big. Most people can easily travel to Wilmington, Annapolis, Baltimore, or Philadelphia if they need a big city experience.
I don’t disagree with anything here. Having said that, to paint a fuller picture the Delaware and Maryland Atlantic Shore are dotted with Resort towns. Ocean City, MD , Rehoboth Beach DE and Bethany Beach DE are popular summer destinations for Dc , Baltimore, Virginia, Philly and even WV residents. A tiny town 8 months of the year in the Summer months, Ocean City alone swells (so to speak) to at least 320,000 - about the size of Winnipeg or Fayetteville.
Out of curiosity, where do you hail from? I’ve never met a fellow Eastern Shore doper. I’m in Salisbury.