Elkton is a town in and the county seat of Cecil County, Maryland, United States. The population was 15,443 at the 2010 census. It was formerly called Head of Elk because it sits at the head of navigation on the Elk River, which flows into the nearby Chesapeake Bay. The town constitutes part of the Delaware Valley.

Pan Am Flight 214 was a scheduled flight of Pan American World Airways from Isla Verde International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Friendship Airport near Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia International Airport. On December 8, 1963, while flying from Baltimore to Philadelphia, the Boeing 707-121 serving the flight crashed near Elkton, Maryland. All 81 occupants of the plane were killed. The crash was Pan Am's first fatal accident with the 707, which it had introduced to its fleet five years earlier.