What was tidewater region

In Maryland the Tidewater area is the flooded river areas below the Fall Line. The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is considered to be a Tidewater region. Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore , parts of Delaware round out the northern part of the region on the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. The term tidewater may be correctly applied to all portions of any area, including Virginia, where the water level is affected by the tides more specifically, where the water level rises when the tide comes in.

In the case of Virginia, the Tidewater region includes the land east of the Fall Line, the natural border with the Piedmont Region. Planters in the early American colonies extended their tobacco productions above the Fall Line, where waterfalls or rapids mark the end of the Tidewater and the beginning of the foothill region known as the Piedmont.

Tidewater is host to flora commonly associated with the South Atlantic pine forests and lower Southeast Coastal Plain maritime flora, the latter found primarily in southeastern Virginia. Tidewater region facts for kids Kids Encyclopedia Facts. All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles including the article images and facts can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise.

If you head west from Virginia Beach, the edges of the political jurisdictions of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Chesapeake are no more obvious than what you saw driving east. The region's political boundaries resemble Los Angeles, with separate urbanized jurisdictions adjacent to each other and little undeveloped farmland separating the cities. The city lines blur in a sea of monotonous urban development - except for the Eastern Shore. That area is still undeveloped at the moment, though a reduced toll on the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel may encourage more commuters to live in Northampton County.

When Tidewater Virginia is defined as a cultural region, the boundaries lack scientific precision. Some consider Tidewater to be just the portion of Virginia that is: 1 east of the Fall Line, and 2 between the James and Potomac rivers, and 3 west of the Chesapeake Bay.

You may hear people discuss "Tidewater and Hampton Roads," to include specifically the Chesapeake Bay watershed south of the James River.

What about the land south of the James River? The Virginia Marine Resources Commission uses its definition of Tidewater to determine where saltwater fishing licenses are required:. All definitions are correct - and all definitions are wrong. Cultural regions are defined in different ways by different people, and there is no official judge sitting in big chair at the front of an International Court of Regional Boundaries to make "official" decisions.

At times, a clear boundary is essential. To identify the portion of Virginia that would be affected by the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, the state defined "Tidewater Virginia" to include the following jurisdictions: 1.

What's missing? The cities of Manassas and Manassas Park, the counties of Loudoun and Fauquier - and other jurisdictions in the Piedmont, Blue Ridge, and Valley and Ridge provinces, where the rivers drain into the Chesapeake Bay but the water levels are not affected by tides. Even defining the edge of Hampton Roads can stimulate a geography debate. The Hampton Roads community is split into two major components, as represented by the location of the regional airports - one on the Peninsula at Newport News-Williamsburg, and one in Norfolk.

If someone south of the James River says they are going to the airport, you can generally assume that they are going to the Norfolk International Airport. However, so long as the region has three small airports, Hampton Roads is unlikely to attract a carrier to offer nonstop flights to Europe. Southeast Virginia residents will have to keep going to Dulles or Raleigh-Durham airports to fly direct to London; the "international" in the names of southeast Virginia airports reflects the ability to reach other countries after stopping at another airport.

Another clue to the impact of the waterways fragmenting the population - there is no culturally-unifying professional sports team in the region. Back in , one source described the problem as follows: 2. It's home to , more people than 45 Jacksonville yet it still lacks a team of its own. Regional transportation projects can knit together the interests of different jurisdictions in a region, but getting separate jurisdictions to adopt common priorities and then direct funding according to those priorities requires a structural, long-term approach.

The mayor of Virginia Beach proposed a quicker approach. He offered a marketing proposal to re-brand the region by changing the name from "Hampton Roads" to "Coastal Virginia. Like it or not, we have two major cities, and then we have smaller cities No one knows where Hampton Roads is. No one knows where Tidewater is.