The Wicomico River /waɪˈkɒmɨkoʊ/ is a 24.4-mile-long (39.3 km) tributary of the Chesapeake Bay on the eastern shore of Maryland. It drains an area of low marshlands and farming country in the middle Delmarva Peninsula. The name "Wicomico" derives from the words wicko mekee, meaning "a place where houses are built," apparently referring to an Indian town on the banks. The river is one of two in Maryland with this same name, along with the Wicomico River (a tributary of the Potomac River) in south central Maryland.
It rises in northern Wicomico County, close to the Delaware state line, and flows generally southwest, through Salisbury, its head of navigation. It enters Monie Bay on the eastern edge of the Chesapeake Bay between Mt. Vernon and Waterview approximately 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Salisbury. The lower 20 miles (32 km) of the river form a tidal estuary.
The gentle free-flowing river is a popular destination for recreational canoeing and kayaking, as well as recreational fishing. The river has also become a hot spot for water sports such as wake boarding and water skiing due to its consistently smooth surface. Barge traffic on the river has made Salisbury the primary shipping points for goods on the Delmarva Peninsula over the last several centuries. Two automobile cable ferries cross the river at the at Whitehaven and Upper Ferry.
Famous quotes containing the words river and/or eastern:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant.... It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)