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:
“I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“From this elevation, just on the skirts of the clouds, we could overlook the country, west and south, for a hundred miles. There it was, the State of Maine, which we had seen on the map, but not much like that,—immeasurable forest for the sun to shine on, the eastern stuff we hear of in Massachusetts. No clearing, no house. It did not look as if a solitary traveler had cut so much as a walking-stick there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)