Maryland State Flag State Outline

 

Maryland's incredibly unique, jagged shape is the direct result of 17th-century geographical ignorance and losing nearly every border dispute with its neighbors. When King Charles I issued the original 1632 royal charter to the Calvert family, the boundaries were defined naturally by the entire Potomac River to the south and arbitrarily by the 40th parallel to the north. However, early colonial maps were wildly inaccurate, leading to fierce overlapping claims. To the north, Maryland originally claimed land that included Philadelphia, sparking a bitter conflict with Pennsylvania's Penn family. This was finally resolved by lowering Maryland's northern border to form the straight, surveyed Mason-Dixon Line. To the east, outdated maps caused the Calverts to lose the Atlantic coastline that became Delaware. Meanwhile, the state’s razor-thin, two-mile-wide western panhandle near Hancock was created because the Potomac River and the Mason-Dixon line naturally pinched together, a squished shape that became even more pronounced when West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the Civil War.