Virginia and Maryland together form one of the most cartographically rich regions in American history. Settled by the English in the early 17th century, bisected by the Chesapeake Bay, and later torn apart by the Civil War, the Virginia-Maryland borderlands were mapped by some of the finest cartographers of the colonial and early republic era. The maps they produced are primary documents of American history — and among the most dramatic pieces of antique cartography a collector can display.
The 1670 Map: Virginia and Maryland at the Dawn of English Settlement
Our most significant Virginia-Maryland map is also one of the oldest: Virginia and Maryland As It Is Planted and Inhabited This Present Year 1670, 1673. Published in London just six decades after the Jamestown settlement, this map shows the Chesapeake world at a pivotal moment — the tobacco economy is established, plantations line the river banks, and the outline of the colonial world that would eventually produce the American founding is already visible.
What makes this map extraordinary is its specificity. The title phrase — "as it is planted and inhabited" — signals the cartographer's intention: this is not a speculative or theoretical map, but a documentary one, showing where English people actually lived in 1670. The rivers — the James, the York, the Rappahannock, the Potomac — are named and detailed because they were the highways of the tobacco economy, the routes along which hogsheads of cured leaf made their way to oceangoing ships. Plantation names appear along the banks. The Chesapeake Bay dominates the composition, as it dominated the life of the region.
For collectors with Virginia or Maryland roots, this map is extraordinary as a display piece precisely because the geography it shows — the rivers, the bay, the broad outlines of the landscape — is still recognizable today. The tidal rivers that shaped 17th-century Virginia's plantation economy still flow through the same terrain.
The Strategic Geography of the Civil War
Nearly two centuries after the 1670 map was drawn, the same Virginia-Maryland terrain became the primary theater of the Civil War's eastern campaigns. The rivers that had been tobacco highways became military obstacles and defensive lines. The roads connecting the Chesapeake ports to the interior determined where armies could march and where they couldn't. Understanding the Civil War in the East means understanding the geography that Virginia and Maryland's colonial-era maps document.
This is why so many Civil War collectors also collect colonial and early republic Virginia maps: the terrain is inseparable from the history. A 1670 map of Virginia and a Civil War battle map of the same region, displayed together, create a compelling historical dialogue across two centuries. Browse our Civil War Maps collection for battle maps of the Virginia theater to pair with colonial-era originals.
Maps of the Chesapeake: Delaware and the Eastern Shore
The Chesapeake world extended east of the bay as well, into the Delmarva Peninsula — the long finger of land shared by Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Our Map of the State of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with the Soundings of the Bay of Delaware, 1801 documents this often-overlooked region at the dawn of the American republic. Published just a decade after Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution, this map shows the Eastern Shore as an established agricultural society — a world of small farms, county seats, and waterway routes that persisted largely unchanged for another century.
The inclusion of Delaware Bay soundings is particularly notable: this is a map made for practical use by mariners and merchants as much as for geographic record-keeping. The Chesapeake and Delaware Bay were the commercial arteries of the mid-Atlantic, and a map that captured both the land and the navigable water was a genuinely useful working document.
Collecting Virginia and Maryland Maps: What to Focus On
For collectors building a Virginia or Maryland map collection, a few themes are worth pursuing deliberately:
- The colonial Chesapeake: Maps from 1650–1750 showing the plantation economy and river-highway system of early Virginia and Maryland are the foundation of any serious collection of this region.
- The Revolutionary era: Maps produced in the 1770s–1780s showing Virginia and Maryland as newly independent states capture the political transformation of the region.
- The Civil War theater: Campaign maps, reconnaissance surveys, and theater maps of the Virginia and Maryland borderlands are among the most collected categories in American military cartography.
- County and city atlases: 19th-century county atlases showing property ownership, roads, and town plats are invaluable for genealogical research and local history.
Browse our Maps of Virginia and Maps of Maryland collections to explore the full range of what we carry, from early colonial surveys through the Civil War era and beyond.
