Maps

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed

The Chesapeake Bay watershed (drainage basin) extends about five hundred miles north from Suffolk, VA (near Norfolk and Virginia Beach) to the headwaters of Otsego Lake, near Cooperstown, NY, and east from mountain streams near Blacksburg, VA to Berlin, MD (near Ocean City). It is essentially a giant, sprawling system of rivers that all drain into one shallow tidal basin, the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries (average depth, only 21 feet).