From the Ice Age to sprawl

First there was a huge meteor impact, then at the end of the ice age a giant glacier melting. Beavers damming streams and creating wetlands, a bounty of huge oysters, 100' schooners transporting the lumber that came from swampy woodlands being converted into tobacco farms, finally massive sprawly shoreline development and a huge load of sediment reshaping the waterway in many ways. 

Few will consider any of this when they catch a glimpse of the Chesapeake while their plane is banking towards the BWI airport or when they traverse the Bay Bridge at the lofty height of 190' on their way to the Atlantic beaches. 

Unfortunately the alternating doomsday and success messages about the state of the Bay have numbed many in the watershed to such an extent that they just tune out when it comes to the health of the Bay. Yet, the collapsed history of the Bay....