1.
Elkridge, Maryland
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Elkridge is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland, United States. The population was 15,593 at the 2010 census, founded early in the 18th century, Elkridge is located at the confluence of three counties, the other two being Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties. Elkridge qualifies as the oldest settlement in its present county, when Howard was a part of Anne Arundel County and its location on the Patapsco River was a key element in its growth. The Maryland General Assembly elected a law to erect a 30-acre, in 1738 an attempt to formalize the town failed with the death of the commissioners before passage. In 1750 a second attempt to formalize the town was attempted around the lands of Phillip Hammond, by comparison, Baltimore Town consisted of only 25 dwellings at that time. A third petition was filed in 1762, the settlement was founded as a place where planters, who each had a wharf along the river, could bring their tobacco crop to be loaded on English trading ships. Later, Elkridge Landing was built as the dock for the community. The millrace that fed water to the furnace was filled in in the 1920s to create the current Race Road, the Hockley Forge and Mill were created upstream in 1760. In 1781, Lafayette camped light infantry at Elkridge Landing en route to Virginia during the Revolutionary war, in 1825, Jansen Town burned, taking out all of the oldest buildings at the Landing and 9 out of 10 houses in the village. The same year, on October 12,1825, the Elkridge Landing postal stop was created, Elkridge has historic churches, including Melville Church on Furnace Avenue. Its original building was the first Methodist church built and was visited on the rides of Francis Asbury. Saint Augustine Church, on Old Washington Road, was built in 1845, Elkridge had a rich history of industries, including pig-iron forging, basket weaving, paper, cotton and grist milling, as well as employment from the B&O Railroad. The Thomas Viaduct, located over Levering Avenue at the entrance to the Patapsco Valley State Park, is the oldest multiple-arched curved stone railroad bridge in the world, built in 1833, its architect was Benjamin Latrobe, Jr. The B&O first used horse-drawn coaches in relays, hence Relay Station was added, the viaduct also carried the Tom Thumb, and the first telegraph message from Washington, D. C. stating What hath God wrought. was wired across. Elkridge did not escape the Civil War, some of these families had slaves. Their estate cottages were built along the top of the Lawyers Hill, including along Old Lawyers Hill Road and this community hall, built in 1871, was a neutral meeting place for entertainments for Northern and Southern sympathizers of the neighborhood and owned by them as stockholders. Neighbors did not betray neighbors and each protected others property from advancing troops, many homes remain, while others burned and have not been rebuilt, such Fairie Knowe in 1850 and 1900. The Lawyers Hill Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993, the Washington Turnpike Road Company built what is now Washington Boulevard between 1796 and 1812, creating a major north–south land route that is now U. S. Route 1
2.
CSX Transportation
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CSX Transportation is a Class I railroad in the United States. The main subsidiary of the CSX Corporation, the railroad is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, CSX operates one of the three Class I railroads serving most of the East Coast, the other two being the Norfolk Southern Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway. It also serves the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, together CSX and Norfolk Southern Railway have a duopoly over all east-west freight rail traffic east of the Mississippi River. As of October 1,2014, CSXs total public stock value was slightly over $32 billion, CSX Transportation was formed on July 1,1986, by combining the Chessie System and Seaboard System Railroad. The origin of the Chessie System was the former Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, which had merged with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, on June 6,1998, the STB approved the CSX–NS application and set August 22,1998, as the effective date of its decision. CSX acquired 42 percent of Conrails assets, and NS received the remaining 58 percent, as a result of the transaction, CSXs rail operations grew to include some 3,800 miles of the Conrail system. CSX began operating its trains on its portion of the Conrail network on June 1,1999, CSX now serves much of the eastern U. S. with a few routes into nearby Canadian cities. The name came about during merger talks between Chessie System, Inc. and Seaboard System Railroad, Inc. commonly called Chessie, the company chairmen said it was important for the new name to include neither of those names because it was a partnership. Employees were asked for suggestions, most of which consisted of combinations of the initials, at the same time a temporary shorthand name was needed for discussions with the Interstate Commerce Commission. CSC was chosen but belonged to a company in Virginia. The lawyers decided to use CSX, and the name stuck, in the public announcement, it was said that CSX is singularly appropriate. C can stand for Chessie, S for Seaboard, and X, however, in the August 9,2016 article on the Railway Age website stated that. And the X was for Consolidated, the T had to be added to CSX when used as a reporting mark because reporting marks that end in X means that the car is owned by a leasing company or private car owner. Its current slogan, How Tomorrow Moves, appeared in 2008, in 2014 Canadian Pacific Railway approached CSX with an offer to merge the two companies, but CSX declined and in 2015 Canadian Pacific made an attempt to purchase and merge with Norfolk Southern. In 2017 CSX announced Hunter Harrison as its new chief executive, CSX added 5 new directors to their board, including Harrison and Mantle Ridge founder Paul Hilal. Mantle Ridge owns 4.9 percent of CSX, CSX operates two regions of five divisions each, the Northern, based in Calumet City, Illinois, and Southern, based in Jacksonville, Florida. The CEO of CSX is Hunter Harrison as of Feb 2017, o823, Q740 and Q741, Q743, and Q745—which consists of Tropicana cars that carry fresh orange juice between Bradenton, Florida, and the Greenville section of Jersey City, New Jersey. The train also runs from Bradenton to Fort Pierce, Florida, in the 21st century, the Juice Train has been studied as a model of efficient rail transportation that can compete with trucks and other modes in the perishable-goods trade
3.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
4.
Arch bridge
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An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end shaped as a curved arch. Arch bridges work by transferring the weight of the bridge and its loads partially into a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either side, a viaduct may be made from a series of arches, although other more economical structures are typically used today. Possibly the oldest existing bridge is the Mycenaean Arkadiko bridge in Greece from about 1300 BC. The stone corbel arch bridge is used by the local populace. The well-preserved Hellenistic Eleutherna Bridge has a corbel arch. The 4th century BC Rhodes Footbridge rests on an early voussoir arch, a more complete survey by the Italian scholar Vittorio Galliazzo found 931 Roman bridges, mostly of stone, in as many as 26 different countries. Roman arch bridges were usually semicircular, although a number were segmental arch bridges, generally, Roman bridges featured wedge-shaped primary arch stones of the same in size and shape. The Romans built both single spans and lengthy multiple arch aqueducts, such as the Pont du Gard and Segovia Aqueduct. Their bridges featured from an early time onwards flood openings in the piers, e. g. in the Pons Fabricius in Rome, Roman engineers were the first and until the industrial revolution the only ones to construct bridges with concrete, which they called Opus caementicium. The outside was covered with brick or ashlar, as in the Alcántara bridge. The Romans also introduced segmental arch bridges into bridge construction, trajans bridge over the Danube featured open-spandrel segmental arches made of wood. This was to be the longest arch bridge for a thousand years both in terms of overall and individual span length, while the longest extant Roman bridge is the 790 m long Puente Romano at Mérida. The late Roman Karamagara Bridge in Cappadocia may represent the earliest surviving bridge featuring a pointed arch, in medieval Europe, bridge builders improved on the Roman structures by using narrower piers, thinner arch barrels and lower span-rise ratios on bridges. Gothic pointed arches were introduced, reducing lateral thrust. The 14th century in particular saw bridge building reaching new heights, the bridge at Trezzo sullAdda, destroyed in the 15th century, even featured a span length of 72 m, not matched until 1796. Constructions such as the acclaimed Florentine segmental arch bridge Ponte Vecchio combined sound engineering with aesthetical appeal, the three elegant arches of the Renaissance Ponte Santa Trinita constitute the oldest elliptic arch bridge worldwide. In China, the oldest existing bridge is the Zhaozhou Bridge of 605 AD. The Zhaozhou Bridge, with a length of 167 feet and span of 123 feet, is the worlds first wholly stone open-spandrel segmental arch bridge, Bridges with perforated spandrels can be found worldwide, such as in China
5.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
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The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland with a line from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into Virginia over the Potomac River, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac, from there it was extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling and a few years later also to Parkersburg, West Virginia. It is now part of the CSX Transportation network, and includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the USA, the B&O also included the Leiper Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U. S. In later years, B&O advertising carried the motto, Linking 13 Great States with the Nation, the B&O Warehouse at the Camden Yards rail junction in Baltimore now dominates the view over the right-field wall at the Baltimore Orioles current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. At the end of 1970 B&O operated 5552 miles of road and 10449 miles of track, not including the Staten Island Rapid Transit or the Reading and its subsidiaries. The fast-growing port city of Baltimore, Maryland faced economic stagnation unless it opened routes to the western states, as New York had done with the Erie Canal in 1820. In 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers studied the best means of restoring that portion of the Western trade which has recently been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation and their answer was to build a railroad—one of the first commercial lines in the world. Two men — Philip E. Thomas and George Brown — were the pioneers of the railroad and they spent the year 1826 investigating railway enterprises in England, which were at that time being tested in a comprehensive fashion as commercial ventures. Their investigation completed, they held a meeting on February 12,1827, including about twenty-five citizens. Thomas was elected as the first president and Brown the treasurer, the capital of the proposed company was fixed at five million dollars, but the B&O was initially capitalized in 1827 with a three million dollar issue of stock. Virtually every citizen of Baltimore owned a share, as the offering was oversubscribed, construction began on July 4,1828, when Charles Carroll of Carrollton did the groundbreaking. The initial tracks were built with granite stringers topped by iron rails. The first section, from Baltimore west to Ellicotts Mills, opened on May 24,1830. Developers decided to follow the Patapsco River to a point near Parrs Ridge, a later compromise allowed the two companies to share the right of way. The State of Maryland granted the B&O a charter to build a line from Baltimore to Washington, D. C. in 1831, and the Washington Branch was opened in 1835. This line joined to the mainline at Relay, Maryland, crossing the Patapsco on the Thomas Viaduct. This line was funded by the state, and was operated separately until the 1870s
6.
Masonry
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Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar, the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of construction are brick, building stone such as marble, granite, travertine, and limestone, cast stone, concrete block, glass block. Masonry is generally a durable form of construction. However, the used, the quality of the mortar and workmanship. A person who constructs masonry is called a mason or bricklayer, Masonry is commonly used for walls and buildings. Brick and concrete block are the most common types of masonry in use in industrialized nations, Concrete blocks, especially those with hollow cores, offer various possibilities in masonry construction. They generally provide great strength, and are best suited to structures with light transverse loading when the cores remain unfilled. Filling some or all of the cores with concrete or concrete with steel reinforcement offers much greater tensile, the use of material such as bricks and stones can increase the thermal mass of a building and can protect the building from fire. Masonry walls are resistant to projectiles, such as debris from hurricanes or tornadoes. Extreme weather, under circumstances, can cause degradation of masonry due to expansion. Masonry tends to be heavy and must be built upon a foundation, such as reinforced concrete. Other than concrete, masonry construction does not lend well to mechanization. Masonry consists of components and has a low tolerance to oscillation as compared to other materials such as reinforced concrete, plastics, wood. Masonry has high compressive strength under vertical loads but has low tensile strength unless reinforced, the tensile strength of masonry walls can be increased by thickening the wall, or by building masonry piers at intervals. Where practical, steel reinforcements such as windposts can be added, a masonry veneer wall consists of masonry units, usually clay-based bricks, installed on one or both sides of a structurally independent wall usually constructed of wood or masonry. In this context the brick masonry is primarily decorative, not structural, the brick veneer is generally connected to the structural wall by brick ties. There is typically an air gap between the veneer and the structural wall. Concrete blocks, real and cultured stones, and veneer adobe are sometimes used in a very similar veneer fashion
7.
Rail transport
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Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks. It is also referred to as train transport. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles run on a flat surface. Tracks usually consist of rails, installed on ties and ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels. Other variations are possible, such as slab track, where the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than road vehicles, so passenger. The operation is carried out by a company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilities. Power is provided by locomotives which either draw electric power from a railway system or produce their own power. Most tracks are accompanied by a signalling system, Railways are a safe land transport system when compared to other forms of transport. The oldest, man-hauled railways date back to the 6th century BC, with Periander, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Rail transport blossomed after the British development of the steam locomotive as a viable source of power in the 19th centuries. With steam engines, one could construct mainline railways, which were a key component of the Industrial Revolution, also, railways reduced the costs of shipping, and allowed for fewer lost goods, compared with water transport, which faced occasional sinking of ships. The change from canals to railways allowed for markets in which prices varied very little from city to city. In the 1880s, electrified trains were introduced, and also the first tramways, starting during the 1940s, the non-electrified railways in most countries had their steam locomotives replaced by diesel-electric locomotives, with the process being almost complete by 2000. During the 1960s, electrified high-speed railway systems were introduced in Japan, other forms of guided ground transport outside the traditional railway definitions, such as monorail or maglev, have been tried but have seen limited use. The history of the growth, decline and restoration to use of transport can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used. The earliest evidence of a railway was a 6-kilometre Diolkos wagonway, trucks pushed by slaves ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element. The Diolkos operated for over 600 years, Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany
8.
Bridge
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A bridge is a structure built to span physical obstacles without closing the way underneath such as a body of water, valley, or road, for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle. There are many different designs that each serve a particular purpose, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the origin of the word bridge to an Old English word brycg, of the same meaning. The word can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰrēw-. The word for the game of the same name has a different origin. The first bridges made by humans were probably spans of cut wooden logs or planks and eventually stones, using a simple support, some early Americans used trees or bamboo poles to cross small caverns or wells to get from one place to another. Dating to the Greek Bronze Age, it is one of the oldest arch bridges still in existence, several intact arched stone bridges from the Hellenistic era can be found in the Peloponnese. The greatest bridge builders of antiquity were the ancient Romans, the Romans built arch bridges and aqueducts that could stand in conditions that would damage or destroy earlier designs. An example is the Alcántara Bridge, built over the river Tagus, the Romans also used cement, which reduced the variation of strength found in natural stone. One type of cement, called pozzolana, consisted of water, lime, sand, brick and mortar bridges were built after the Roman era, as the technology for cement was lost. In India, the Arthashastra treatise by Kautilya mentions the construction of dams, a Mauryan bridge near Girnar was surveyed by James Princep. The bridge was swept away during a flood, and later repaired by Puspagupta, the use of stronger bridges using plaited bamboo and iron chain was visible in India by about the 4th century. A number of bridges, both for military and commercial purposes, were constructed by the Mughal administration in India and this bridge is also historically significant as it is the worlds oldest open-spandrel stone segmental arch bridge. European segmental arch bridges date back to at least the Alconétar Bridge, rope bridges, a simple type of suspension bridge, were used by the Inca civilization in the Andes mountains of South America, just prior to European colonization in the 16th century. During the 18th century there were innovations in the design of timber bridges by Hans Ulrich Grubenmann, Johannes Grubenmann. The first book on bridge engineering was written by Hubert Gautier in 1716, a major breakthrough in bridge technology came with the erection of the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, England in 1779. It used cast iron for the first time as arches to cross the river Severn, with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, truss systems of wrought iron were developed for larger bridges, but iron does not have the tensile strength to support large loads. With the advent of steel, which has a tensile strength, much larger bridges were built. In 1927 welding pioneer Stefan Bryła designed the first welded bridge in the world
9.
Viaduct
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A viaduct is a bridge composed of several small spans for crossing a valley, dry or wetland, or forming a flyover. The term viaduct is derived from the Latin via for road and ducere, the ancient Romans did not use the term, it is a modern derivation from an analogy with aqueduct. Like the Roman aqueducts, many early viaducts comprised a series of arches of equal length. Viaducts may span land, water or both, a viaduct is a bridge composed of several small spans for crossing a valley or a gorge. The term is conventional for a flyover as opposed to a flying junction or a rail bridge which crosses one feature. In Romance languages, the word refers to a bridge which spans only land. A bridge spanning water is called ponte, the longest viaduct in antiquity may have been the Pont Serme which crossed wide marshes in southern France. Viaducts are commonly used in cities that are railroad centers, such as Chicago, Atlanta, Birmingham, London. These viaducts cross the railroad yards that are needed for freight trains there. These viaducts keep highway and city street traffic from having to be interrupted by the train traffic. Likewise, some viaducts carry railroads over large valleys, or they carry railroads over cities with many cross-streets, many viaducts over land connect points of similar height in a landscape, usually by bridging a river valley or other eroded opening in an otherwise flat area. Often such valleys had roads descending either side that become inadequate for the traffic load, such bridges also lend themselves for use by rail traffic, which requires straighter and flatter routes. Some viaducts have more than one deck, such that one deck has vehicular traffic, others were built to span settled areas, crossing over roads beneath—the reason for many viaducts in London. Viaducts over water use of islands or successive arches. The Millau Viaduct is a cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France and it was formally dedicated on 14 December 2004 and opened to traffic two days later. The viaduct Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge in China is the longest bridge in the according to Guinness World Records as of 2011. Where a viaduct is built across land rather than water, the space below the arches may be used for such as car parking, vehicle repairs, light industry, bars. In the United Kingdom, many lines in urban areas have been constructed on viaducts
10.
Pier (architecture)
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A pier, in architecture, is an upright support for a structure or superstructure such as an arch or bridge. Sections of structural walls between openings can function as piers, the simplest cross section of the pier is square, or rectangular, but other shapes are also common. In medieval architecture, massive circular supports called drum piers, cruciform piers, columns are a similar upright support, but stand on a round base. In buildings with sequence of bays between piers, each opening between two piers is considered a single bay, single-span bridges have abutments at each end that support the weight of the bridge and serve as retaining walls to resist lateral movement of the earthen fill of the bridge approach. Multi-span bridges require piers to support the ends of spans between these abutments, in cold climates the upstream edge of a pier may include a starkwater to prevent accumulation of broken ice during peak snowmelt flows. The starkwater has a sharpened upstream edge sometimes called a cutwater, the cutwater edge may be of concrete or masonry, but is often capped with a steel angle to resist abrasion and focus force at a single point to fracture floating pieces of ice striking the pier. In the Arc de Triomphe, Paris the central arch and side arches are raised on four massive planar piers, the original plan by Donato Bramante for St Peters Basilica in Rome has richly articulated piers, rendered in solid black. The vaulting they support is in lines, a familiar representation convention in architectural plans. Four piers support the weight of the dome at the central crossing and these piers were found to be too small to support the weight and were changed later by Michelangelo to account for the massive weight of the dome. The piers of the four apses that project from each wall are also strong. Many niches articulate the wall-spaces of the piers, column — pillar Compound pier Pilaster Deep foundation
11.
Ohio
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Ohio /oʊˈhaɪ. oʊ/ is a Midwestern state in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Ohio is the 34th largest by area, the 7th most populous, the states capital and largest city is Columbus. The state takes its name from the Ohio River, the name originated from the Iroquois word ohi-yo’, meaning great river or large creek. Partitioned from the Northwest Territory, the state was admitted to the Union as the 17th state on March 1,1803, Ohio is historically known as the Buckeye State after its Ohio buckeye trees, and Ohioans are also known as Buckeyes. Ohio occupies 16 seats in the United States House of Representatives, Ohio is known for its status as both a swing state and a bellwether in national elections. Six Presidents of the United States have been elected who had Ohio as their home state, Ohios geographic location has proven to be an asset for economic growth and expansion. Because Ohio links the Northeast to the Midwest, much cargo, Ohio has the nations 10th largest highway network, and is within a one-day drive of 50% of North Americas population and 70% of North Americas manufacturing capacity. To the north, Lake Erie gives Ohio 312 miles of coastline, Ohios southern border is defined by the Ohio River, and much of the northern border is defined by Lake Erie. Ohios neighbors are Pennsylvania to the east, Michigan to the northwest, Ontario Canada, to the north, Indiana to the west, Kentucky on the south, Ohio is bounded by the Ohio River, but nearly all of the river itself belongs to Kentucky and West Virginia. Ohio has only that portion of the river between the rivers 1792 low-water mark and the present high-water mark, the border with Michigan has also changed, as a result of the Toledo War, to angle slightly northeast to the north shore of the mouth of the Maumee River. Much of Ohio features glaciated plains, with a flat area in the northwest being known as the Great Black Swamp. Most of Ohio is of low relief, but the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau features rugged hills, in 1965 the United States Congress passed the Appalachian Regional Development Act, at attempt to address the persistent poverty and growing economic despair of the Appalachian Region. This act defines 29 Ohio counties as part of Appalachia, the worst weather disaster in Ohio history occurred along the Great Miami River in 1913. Known as the Great Dayton Flood, the entire Miami River watershed flooded, as a result, the Miami Conservancy District was created as the first major flood plain engineering project in Ohio and the United States. Grand Lake St. Marys in the west central part of the state was constructed as a supply of water for canals in the era of 1820–1850. For many years this body of water, over 20 square miles, was the largest artificial lake in the world and it should be noted that Ohios canal-building projects were not the economic fiasco that similar efforts were in other states. Some cities, such as Dayton, owe their emergence to location on canals. Summers are typically hot and humid throughout the state, while winters generally range from cool to cold, precipitation in Ohio is moderate year-round
12.
Maryland
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The states largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, the state is named after Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of Charles I of England. George Calvert was the first Lord of Baltimore and the first English proprietor of the colonial grant. Maryland was the state to ratify the United States Constitution. Maryland is one of the smallest U. S. states in terms of area, as well as one of the most densely populated, Maryland has an area of 12,406.68 square miles and is comparable in overall area with Belgium. It is the 42nd largest and 9th smallest state and is closest in size to the state of Hawaii, the next largest state, its neighbor West Virginia, is almost twice the size of Maryland. Maryland possesses a variety of topography within its borders, contributing to its nickname America in Miniature. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted by Washington, D. C. which sits on land that was part of Montgomery and Prince Georges counties and including the town of Georgetown. This land was ceded to the United States Federal Government in 1790 to form the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Close to the town of Hancock, in western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state. This geographical curiosity makes Maryland the narrowest state, bordered by the Mason–Dixon line to the north, portions of Maryland are included in various official and unofficial geographic regions. Much of the Baltimore–Washington corridor lies just south of the Piedmont in the Coastal Plain, earthquakes in Maryland are infrequent and small due to the states distance from seismic/earthquake zones. The M5.8 Virginia earthquake in 2011 was felt moderately throughout Maryland, buildings in the state are not well-designed for earthquakes and can suffer damage easily. The lack of any glacial history accounts for the scarcity of Marylands natural lakes, laurel Oxbow Lake is an over one-hundred-year-old 55-acre natural lake two miles north of Maryland City and adjacent to Russett. Chews Lake is a natural lake two miles south-southeast of Upper Marlboro. There are numerous lakes, the largest of them being the Deep Creek Lake. Maryland has shale formations containing natural gas, where fracking is theoretically possible, as is typical of states on the East Coast, Marylands plant life is abundant and healthy. Middle Atlantic coastal forests, typical of the southeastern Atlantic coastal plain, grow around Chesapeake Bay, moving west, a mixture of Northeastern coastal forests and Southeastern mixed forests cover the central part of the state
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