The Patuxent River is a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay in the state of Maryland. There are three main river drainages for central Maryland: the Potomac River to the west passing through Washington, D.C., the Patapsco River to the northeast passing through Baltimore, and the Patuxent River between the two. The Patuxent watershed had a rapidly growing population of 590,769 in 2000. It is the largest and longest river entirely within Maryland, and its watershed is the largest completely within the state.
Geography The river source, from the Chesapeake, is in the hills of the Maryland Piedmont near the intersection of four counties – Howard, Frederick, Montgomery and Carroll, and only from Parr's Spring, the source of the south fork of the Patapsco River. Flowing in a generally southeastward direction, the Patuxent crosses the urbanized corridor between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and opens up into a navigable tidal estuary near the colonial seaport of Queen Anne in Prince George's County, Maryland, just southeast of Bowie. The river is bounded by significant marsh areas for from the Waysons Corner area to the Hunting Creek confluence. The -long tidal estuary is never wider than .
It marks the boundary between Montgomery, Prince George's, Charles and St. Mary's counties on the west and Howard, Anne Arundel, and Calvert counties on the east. The Patuxent estuary's deepest point, below sea level, is in the lower Patuxent.
The three largest cities in the watershed are Columbia, Bowie, and Laurel, Maryland. There is a percentage of agricultural activity in the region as well. The mid and lower banks of the river have swamp and marshland ecosystems. Many of those ecosystems are protected by some form of parkland, on the state and local levels, the most notable of which include Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary, Merkle Wetlands Sanctuary,Meyer, Eugene L., The Legacy of Edgar Merkle: Canada Geese on the Patuxent, The Washington Post, August 18, 1984https://web.archive.org/web/20100815073135/http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/southern/merkle.asp Merkle Wildlife Refuge web site and Patuxent River Park. Farther north is the 20 square mile Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge, the largest protected area in the watershed.
Tributaries The Little Patuxent River, the Middle Patuxent River, and the Western Branch are the three largest tributaries. The Middle Patuxent flows into the Little Patuxent just upstream from the historic Savage Mill in Savage. The Little Patuxent then joins the Patuxent just southwest of Crofton. The Middle Patuxent flows through the middle of Howard County, while the Little Patuxent flows through northeast and southeast Howard County and western Anne Arundel County.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 Western Branch originates under the name Folly Branch in the Wingate Drive area of the northern part of Glenn Dale, assuming the name "Western Branch" in Woodmore, continuing southward through Prince George's County, joined by Collington Branch before it joins the Patuxent near Upper Marlboro.
History
Native Americans have lived along the Patuxent River since at least 1100 BC. An archaeological dig at Pig Point (just north of Jug Bay at the end of Wrighton Road Pig Point Archaeology Site, at the end of Wrighton Road, Bristol, via Google Maps) uncovered some of the oldest known artifacts in the Mid Atlantic states,"Amazing artifacts unearthed at Pig Point", E.B. Furgurson III, The Archaeology News Network, April 2011. Original source: The Capital [April 17, 2011] including pottery, arrow and spear points, and remnants of wigwams, fires and foodways. The site was probably a center of trade in the region and has one of the best unbroken archaeological records on the East Coast. The Pig Point site includes remnants of the oldest structures ever found in Maryland, wigwam post holes dating to the third century.
The word Patuxent is derived from the Algonquian language used by the indigenous people living in the area prior to the arrival of the European settlers. Its meaning is debated. According to some sources it means "water running over loose stones"Patuxent Riverkeeper - About the river: http://paxriverkeeper.org/about-the-river/ while others believe it means the "place where tobacco grows".Stein Charles Francis. 19771976. A History of Calvert County Maryland. 3d ed. Baltimore Md: Published by the author in cooperation with the Calvert County Historical Society. page 2
The Patuxent River was first named ("Pawtuxunt") on the detailed map resulting from the 1608 voyage upriver by Jamestown, Virginia settler John Smith. Captain Smith got as far as the rough vicinity of the present-day Merkle Wildlife Sanctuary (Lyons Creek) area, from the Chesapeake near what is now the Anne Arundel–Calvert–Prince George's County tripoint. This was most likely the second visit by Europeans to the Patuxent, as in June 1588 a small Spanish expedition under Vicente Gonzalez is believed to have anchored for the night in the Patuxent mouth.
The river was an important colonial shipping port with the government's garrison situated at the mouth of the river where Charles Calvert was first Collector in 1673.Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. "Mattapany (18ST390)". Data from the Colonial Encounters project. Colonial Encounters website www.colonialencounters.org Retrieved 11 March 2019."Archives of Maryland Historical List Collectors, 1673-1776." Source: Edward C. Papenfuse, et al., Archives of Maryland, Historical List, new series, Vol. 1. Annapolis, MD: Maryland State Archives, 1990. Maryland State Archives website Retrieved 11 March 2019. In 1699, Thomas Browne, sometimes referred to as 'The Patuxent Ranger', followed the river from the Snowden plantation to where Clarksville is sited. In 1702 George Plater I was the Patuxent naval officer (later based at Sotterley Plantation),"America and West Indies: October 1702, 6-10." Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: Volume 20, 1702. Ed. Cecil Headlam. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1912. 650-653 British History Online website. Retrieved 11 March 2019. having earlier served as Collector after Calvert, Rousby, Sewall, Digges, and Payne held the collectorship. By the mid and late seventeenth century respectively, colonists spread upriver to Mt. Calvert and Billingsley Point, two 18th-century mansions upriver from the Chesapeake that are today part of Patuxent River Park. By 1705, the Snowden iron ore furnace (also known as the Patuxent Iron Works) just southeast of Laurel, was shipping "pig iron" downriver from the current vicinity of the 1783 Montpelier Mansion, also part of Patuxent River Park.
In August 1814, Commodore Joshua Barney and his Chesapeake Bay Flotilla were trapped in the Patuxent by the British fleet under Admiral Sir George Cockburn. To keep them from British hands, Barney's men ignited the magazines of his ships in the four mile (6 km) stretch above Pig Point, upriver from the Chesapeake when the British approached. The British then launched their attack on Washington, D.C., from their warships in the Patuxent at Benedict, away. From there, the troops marched through Nottingham, Upper Marlboro, Bladensburg, and on to Washington.
Ecology The Patuxent's waters contain several fish uncommon / not found in the other drainages of Maryland. The stripeback darter, glassy darter, and shield darter all reside within various tributaries in the Patuxent, with the stripeback and glassy darters entirely extirpated from other drainages in the state. The shield darter is found in extremely low densities in the mainstem Potomac river and in fair numbers in the Susquehanna drainage. The upper Patuxent starts in the piedmont, and thus contains several fish not found downstream in the lower coastal plain Patuxent, such as the rosyside dace and cutlips minnow.
Economy and commerce Tobacco farming dominated the Patuxent's economy for the two centuries following white settlement, with about sixty percent of Maryland's tobacco coming from the Patuxent valley by the late eighteenth century.
Destruction of the plantations by the British and of the soil by centuries of tobacco farming brought the mid and lower Patuxent valley into a period of decline that would last until the 1930s, when there were fewer residents in the Patuxent's Calvert County than there were in the 1840s, and only a few hundred more than in the first Calvert County census in 1790.
The Patuxent was plied by regular steamship service, mostly from the Weems Line, from the 1820s to the 1920s, replacing the schooners and sailing packets that had for the previous centuries served the river's many landings and docks along the tidal reach.
The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission constructed two dams on the main branch in the mid-twentieth century. Brighton Dam was constructed from the Chesapeake in 1943, impounding the waters of Triadelphia Reservoir; in 1952 the T. Howard Duckett Dam was constructed farther downstream, near Laurel, thus creating Rocky Gorge Reservoir.Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. Laurel, Maryland (2007). "The WSSC-- A Thumbnail History", Accessed 2010-02-15. The land surrounding the two reservoirs is administered by the WSSC, creating a forested reserve of accessible to the public for horseback riding, hunting, fishing, and picnicking in limited areas. The state of Maryland classifies the T. Howard Duckett Dam as "high hazard" because large releases of water flood areas of North Laurel.Maryland Department of the Environment. Baltimore, Maryland (2006). "Maryland Dams Endure Dramatic Rainfall", eMDE (online newsletter). V.2, No. 6, October 2006.
With public recreational land on one or both shores of 74 of the river's 115 miles including the reservoir land, the impact that recreation in natural settings now has on the river's economy is obvious. The Patuxent Naval Air Station at the mouth of the river has continued to grow during past decades along with tourism, providing another main economic engine in the lower river valley that includes the popular boating center of Solomons.
The Patuxent River is the sole known source for Maryland's State Gemstone, a form of agate called Patuxent River stone.
Environmental concerns According to EcoHealth Report Cards, the Patuxent River has a below average health rating, scoring a 38%, compared to the Chesapeake's over all health rating of 54%, as of 2016. However, the river does have higher ratings in dissolved oxygen, and likely, will soon have higher ratings in phosphorus.
The Middle and Little Patuxent watersheds include nearly all of Columbia, Maryland, including its downtown urban Lake Kittamaqundi and Wilde Lake. Columbia is a large planned community in Howard County that opened in 1967. Columbia's major downtown roadway is called Little Patuxent Parkway, and Maryland Route 175 in East Columbia was known as the Patuxent Parkway until May 2006, when it was renamed for Columbia's founder, the late James Rouse, and his wife, Patty. It was the largely unchecked erosion from this late 1960s and 1970s building spree that contributed the bulk of the Patuxent River's highest and most damaging sediment, siltation, and pollution levels to date downstream. This in turn led to a nearly complete destruction of a once thriving seafood industry along the brackish portion of the river.