Morning mist lifts from the quiet waters off Deal Island. A Great Blue heron flaps its wings silently, lifting its stilt-like body into the air, on the lookout for another soft shelled crab to flip into its long beak. A skipjack makes silent headway into the straits, readying its oyster dredge for another day’s fishing. Great flocks of ducks honk simultaneously while they signal a mass landing. Another autumnal morning on Chesapeake Bay evolves slowly. This bucolic scene repeats itself daily only 100 kilometres east of Washington DC.

Sir Walter Raleigh explored the eastern coast of America for Queen Elizabeth 1 and returned with tales of untold riches, safe harbours and rustic inhabitants. Captain John Smith followed in 1608 while he thoroughly explored the vastness of Chesapeake Bay, charting its shallow waters to establish a permanent colony at Jamestown in 1608.

Now, it’s nearly impossible to imagine how Chesapeake (from an Algonquin Virginian Indian word meaning “great water”) looked to Smith’s eyes. His descriptions of oyster shoals so immense that they rose from the water and posed hazards for passing ships are difficult to conceive today. It had pristine clear waters, pellucid from its northern headwaters at the mouth of the Susquehanna River’s drowned valley to its debouchment into the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Charles. The Bay extends 300 kilometres from north to south and expands nearly 50 kilometres at its widest point at the mouth of the Potomac River. The stories of crystal clear rivers feeding into the thriving estuary contrast completely with the murky waters seen later.

Chesapeake is America’s largest marine estuary, a haven for wildlife and ships alike. A cradle of history and for centuries its most prolific fishery, the Bay has seen it all. Surrounded by rich agricultural lands as well as humming metropolitan centres, Chesapeake Bay’s water quality has suffered primarily due to nutrient runoff, mostly derived from nitrogen and phosphorus based fertilisers. Deadly algal blooms in the 1970s were warning signs that the Bay was in dire straits, choking on the asphyxiating clouds of algae that sprouted from fertiliser runoff and industrial pollution, its ignominious end sped along by rampant, unchecked suburban development of tidal marshes, refuges for fish hatcheries and water birds. Over-fishing also contributed to the Bay’s ill health. Oyster populations are estimated to be two percent of what they once were. The previously healthy oyster populations capably flushed clean the entire contents of the Bay in one day. Present numbers now take nearly one year to accomplish the same natural filtration process.

Rescue operations had to be put in place. In 1983, the Chesapeake Bay Program was created. Combining federal, state and local authorities into one easier decision making body, this non-profit organisation has helped to focus national attention on the Bay’s plight. Further commitment was made in 2000 with the formation of the Chesapeake 2000 agreement which guides the Bay’s environmental restoration through to 2010. The new agreement includes New York, West Virginia and Delaware in this landmark plan that finally encompasses all of the states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Strict controls are now in place regarding urban development, safeguarding wildlife breeding habitations and preventing further agricultural runoff into the Bay.

For travellers interested in exploring a part of America that is often overlooked by international visitors, Chesapeake offers an intriguing insight into the heart of the nation. Far too large an area to take in over one visit, I suggest that neophyte visitors concentrate on the eastern shores of Maryland and Virginia with side trips into Delaware to comprehend Chesapeake’s unique character.

St. Michaels, nestled into a quiet inlet in the Bay’s inner section, is a few hours drive from Washington DC. It’s a great place in which to begin an exploration of Chesapeake’s less developed, wilder corners. The prolific author and long time St Michaels resident, James Michener, based himself in the town while he penned his authoritative history, simply entitled Chesapeake. Although typically Michener-ian in scope, thick as a doorstop and weighted down with sentences as long as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, it’s a revealing commentary on the personality of the place. The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s quirky displays help in understanding the Bay’s emergence as the nation’s first waterway. Children will certainly enjoy being a sailor for a day. The Captain John Smith Water Trail is the US National Park’s first official water trail. Readily accessible sections of it are near St Michaels on the Choptank River. Hire a canoe or kayak for a day’s exploration of the gently flowing tidal Choptank. It’s an opportunity to be Captain John Smith for a day at least.

Tilghman Island, connected to the mainland by an historic drawbridge, is quintessentially Chesapeake. Quiet and serene, it is a world unto itself. A small fleet of skipjacks, a Chesapeake invention that replaced the barge-like bugeye oyster boat as the best means in which to dredge for oysters, operates from Tilghman Island’s main harbour. Skipjacks occupy a special place in Chesapeake’s maritime history. Even today, motorised boats are prohibited from dredging for oysters. Only sail powered skipjacks are allowed, a link to shipwright skills mostly lost in this era of contemporary steel and fiberglass speedboats.

The other place in which to see skipjacks at work is at Deal Island’s Wenona town harbour, where I enquire casually about sailing on one. My grizzled, salt-weathered respondent is laconic. 'You can just hire one at the wharf over there (pointing gruffly over his right shoulder) if you ask nicely. Or you can wait for the regatta. I’d take you out myself but you’d have to work hard or just pay me a lot of money.' This is typical Chesa-speak: direct, no-nonsense and to the point. It’s also humorous if you’re patient and have no expectations. Deal Island is also a notable Wildlife Management Area famed for its water bird population. Impressive numbers of indigenous birds make their home here and it’s a safe rest stop on the Eastern Seaboard Flyway for migratory species from places as far away as Patagonia or the Arctic. Wenona hosts annual skipjack races in early September. It’s also a busy soft shelled crabbing town whose businesses export crabs all over the world.

For a dip into another world, with its busy beaches and restaurants, spend a day or evening in Rehoboth Beach just 90 minutes drive to the east of St Michaels on the Delaware shore. Seductively positioned near-yet-far from Chesapeake Bay, Rehoboth’s waltzing sea breezes may come as a surprise when the Bay swelters under a relentless summer sun. Rehoboth is Washington DC’s escape village on the sea. Beaches stretch into the horizon and though the water is chilly, the swimming is safe, at least at the patrolled beaches. Rehoboth has the Delmarva Peninsula (the spike of land that juts into the Atlantic Ocean, forming the eastern boundary of Chesapeake), at its back, an abbreviated amalgamation of three state’s names: Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. It is easily the trendiest town between Miami and New York. Sample the town’s art galleries, cafés and bars to see what happens when Washingtonians let their bureaucratically controlled hair down. At one of the popular clubs a bartender says, 'We make the strongest Margaritas north of Mexico, but ours are probably more expensive.'

South of Rehoboth, where the Delmarva Peninsula separates the Bay from the ocean by only a couple of dozen kilometres, towns diminish in size and number into tiny settlements dotted with churches and curiously compelling cemeteries. Quiet reigns again. With its windswept, lonely beaches, the Assateague Island National Park, just across the bridge from charming little Chincoteague town, is known for its herds of feral ponies, made famous in Marguerite Henry’s renowned children’s book Misty of Chincoteague. The ponies were released by shipwrecked sailors hundreds of years ago and gradually established breeding herds unique to the area. The annual Pony Swim from Chincoteague to the Assateague islands exemplifies the adaptability of the native ponies; they’re like ducks to water.

Along the road to the great bay’s final exit into the Atlantic sits Cape Charles. One of the region’s most historic towns, where history is as common as crab cakes, this is indeed something to boast about. Cape Charles is an excellent place to hang back and relax in its somnolent atmosphere. It has one of the East Coast’s most extensive arrays of Victorian architecture, and is largely overlooked by the crowds rushing up and down the interstate highways. Cape Charles is an unforgettable place to watch the sun set over the water, an unusual claim to make on the US’ eastern seaboard. The Cape Charles Museum and Welcome Center is inviting and offers further insight into the town’s origins. When I ask one the center’s volunteers about Cape Charles’ architectural heritage, she hands me a map of the town and tells me to 'Wander around a while and soak in the feel of the town. We’re not like any other place in Virginia, we’re special, kind of remote. Most people who find us really want to be here.' The nearby Virginia National Wildlife Refuge is another jewel in Chesapeake’s crown for birdwatchers and wildlife enthusiasts, as is the Kiptopeke State Park, with its healthy population of hawks and waterfowl.

Perhaps Cape Charles is an appropriate town in which to contemplate why Chesapeake Bay exists as it does today. Unlike the other drowned river valleys scattered about the globe that make up the world’s great bays, Chesapeake was formed by a cataclysmic event that occurred some 35.5 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch. A bolide, a large asteroid or comet, more than a mile wide plunged into the water just off Cape Charles. Travelling at an estimated speed of 113,000 kilometres per hour, it obliterated life on the American East Coast at the time. Billions of tonnes of ocean water were propelled upwards and vaporised. Millions of tonnes of rocks and debris were ejected into the atmosphere. The impact crater plunged hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface and remained hidden until scientists discovered it in 1983. Fossil remains have been subjects of fascination for Europeans since Chesapeake Bay was discovered by Europeans over 400 years ago. The Algonquin tribes that occupied the region for millennia must have been equally intrigued by the prehistoric creatures embedded in the calcified rocks sticking out of the Bay’s cliffs and ledges.

Chesapeake Bay has had a powerful impact on America, and not simply because it was formed by one the greatest explosions ever recorded in the history of the Earth. Also because it witnessed the birth of a nation, fed its earliest inhabitants, created untold riches for innumerable families and provided homes to countless species of fish, waterfowl and other animals. The Algonquin people got the name right; it is simply the Greatest Water'.