houses, gardens, and buildings are open to the
public year-round or seasonally.

B & O Railroad Museum
Baltimore (410) 752-2490
Baltimore City Life Museums (410) 396-3523
Baltimore Museum of Industry (410) 727-4808
Banneker-Douglass Museum of
African American History & Culture
Annapolis (410) 974-2893
Calvert Marine Museum
Solomons (410) 326-2042
Carroll County Farm Museum
(handiwork & skills of earlier times)
near Westminster (410) 876-2667
(410) 848-7775
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
St Michael's (410) 745-2916
Historic St Mary's City (301) 862-0960
Jefferson Patterson Historical Park & Museum
St Leonard (410) 586-8500
Maryland Science Center & Davis Planetarium
Baltimore (410) 685-5225
National Aquarium Baltimore (410) 576-3800
National Colonial Farm Museum
Accokeek (301) 283-2113
National Museum of Civil War Medicine
Frederick (301) 695-1864
Radliffe Maritime Museum
Baltimore (410) 685-3750
Western Maryland Railroad Museum
Cumberland 1-800-TRAIN 50
U.S. Naval Academy Museum
Annapolis (410)-293-2108
Young Peoples Museum of Maryland History
Baltimore (410)-685-3750

NAME
Maryland's name honors Queen Henrietta Maria
(1609-1666), wife of Charles I (1600-1649), King
of Great Britain and Ireland, who signed the 1632
charter establishing the Maryland colony. The
Queen was the daughter of Henry IV of France
(1553-1610). Of her nine children, three died in
infancy and two assumed the throne after her death.
In 1644, Henrietta Maria left England for France.
Her husband was executed in 1649. Her son, Char-
les II ruled Great Britain and Ireland from 1667 to
1685; her son James II ruled from 1685 to 1688.

NICKNAMES

Maryland is known as both the Old Line State and
the Free State.

Old Line State. According to some historians, Gen.
George Washington bestowed the name "Old Line
State" and thereby associated Maryland with its
regular line troops, the Maryland Line, who served
courageously in many Revolutionary War battles.

Free State The nickname "Free State" was created
by Hamilton Owens, editor of the Baltimore Sun.
In 1923, Georgia Congressman William D. Up-
shaw, a firm supporter of Prohibition, denounced
Maryland as a traitor to the Union for refusing to
pass a State enforcement act. Mr. Owens thereupon
wrote a mock serious editorial entitled "The Mary-
land Free State," arguing that Maryland should
secede from the Union rather than prohibit the sale
of liquor. The irony in the editorial was subtle, and
Mr. Owens decided not to print it. However, he
popularized the nickname in later editorials.

PARKS & RECREATION AREAS

Some forty operational State parks, including 7
parks with waterfront areas, covering 90,239 acres,
15 State-owned lakes and ponds open to public
fishing, 12 State forests and portions of 20 State
parks open to public hunting, 36 wildlife manage-
ment areas, covering 88,348 acres, open to public
hunting, 6 natural environment areas containing
8,015 acres. Because of Maryland's diverse geogra-
phy, State parks offer a variety of recreation from
snow skiing to Atlantic Ocean fishing.

PHYSIOGRAPHY

Divided into three provinces with progressively higher
altitudes from east to west: Coastal Plain province
extends from Atlantic Ocean to Fall Line, a natural
line running from Delaware boundary, around head
of Chesapeake Bay, through Baltimore, and southwest
to Washington, where streams drop to lower land
level, Piedmont or "Foothill" province from Fall Line
to base of Catoctin Mountains, Appalachian province
from base of Catoctin Mountains to western bound-
ary of State. Mean elevation, 350 feet; maximum
elevation, 3,360 feet at Backbone Mountain

POET LAUREATE

Roland Flint, Ph.D. , Poet Laureate
of Maryland, 1995—

In the 18th century, Ebenezer Cook, author of The
Sot-weed Factor Or, A Voyage to Maryland (1708),
styled himself Poet Laureate. Maryland did not have
an official poet, however, until 1959. In that year, the
General Assembly authorized the Governor to appoint
a citizen of the State as Poet Laureate of Maryland
(Chapter 178, Acts of 1959, Code State Government
Article, sec. 13-306).

Roland Flint was named Poet Laureate by the
Governor in September 1995. A nationally recog-
nized poet, he has been a professor of English at
Georgetown University since 1981. His works in-
clude And Morning (1975), The Honey and Other
Poems for Rosalind (1976), Say It (1979), Resum-
ing Green: Selected Poems, 1965-1982 (1983), Sicily
(1987), Stubborn (1990), Hearing Voices (1991),
Pigeon (1991), and Pigeon in the Night (1994) Dr.
Flint lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.