Modern history tends to begin telling the story of the Chesapeake Bay from the time when English settlers established a camp at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. And the John Smith / Pocohantas love affair makes for a nice story. But the Chesapeake has an even more fiery story than that.

One day, 35 Million years ago the sky lit up with an enormous fire ball hurling toward earth. A bolide, a type of meteor or comet-like object, impacted the area that is now the lower tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, near Cape Charles, Virginia. It dug out a wide basin 55 miles across. Over the next few million years, sea levels fluctuated, glaciers came and went, the area that is now the Bay alternated between dry land and shallow coastal seas. The earth was still in the process of forming itself.

From 10 million years ago to 2 million years ago, one ice age after another locked up massive amounts of ocean water in colossal glaciers causing the mid-Atlantic coastline to extend 200 miles farther east than it is today. Then global warming began to happen. Glacier melt during warm periods carved channels through the coastal plain. These channels will one day become the feeder rivers for the Chesapeake. During this time conifer forests are colonizing the exposed earth. Animal and bird species, including the wooly mammoths are present.

One million years ago, an ape-like creature in Africa is learning to stand erect.

18,000 years ago the Wisconsin Glacier begins to melt and the upstate New York, Susquehanna river is turned into a torrent that lasts for 3000 years. Roaring its way from Cooperstown, NY, through Pennsylvania and Maryland, this 444 mile inundation carved a deep trench through three states before reaching the northern tip of what was about to become the Chesapeake. What was a wide flat coastal zone two hundred miles long filled with fresh water and emptied into the Atlantic at its mouth at Norfolk, Virginia. Over these thousands of years, as the great river began to slow the Chesapeake became an enormous salty estuary.

The landscape dominated by conifers begins transitioning to hardwood species like maple and oak. Freshwater wetlands and coastal salt marshes are formed. Small populations of Paleo-indians settle in the Bay region.

2,000 years ago the Bay is more or less its current shape: about 200 miles long, 35 miles across at its widest and an average depth of 21 feet. The Susquehanna still puts 19 million gallons per minute into her. She has another 144 major rivers and streams that feed her. About half of her water comes from the Atlantic. She is the largest estuary in North America.

Native American populations now live throughout the region and develop sophisticated hunting and fishing methods . The mammoths are gone, replaced by bear and deer, and the Bay produces a wealth of fish and especially easily caught shellfish.

Things are more or less quiet and peaceful until about 1607,.. but then you know the rest of the story.

For more articles about the Chesapeake by this author, see: The Chesapeake , The Loon , Bottlenose Dolphin , Buffelhead , Sea Nettle , Barnacle , Blue Crab , Oyster , Eagle , Great Blue Heron