Maryland , is a Mid-Atlantic state located on the East Coast of the United States and is classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a South-Atlantic state. It was the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution, and is nicknamed the Old Line State and the Free State. Its history as a border state has led it to exhibit characteristics of both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States.

Geography
For a small state, Maryland possesses a great variety of topography; hence its other nickname, "America in Miniature." It ranges from sandy dunes dotted with seagrass in the east, to low marshlands teeming with water moccasins and large bald cypress near the bay, to gently rolling hills of oak forest in the piedmont region, and mountain pine groves in the west.

Maryland is bounded on the north by Pennsylvania; on the west by West Virginia; on the north and east by Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean; and on the south, across the Potomac River, by Virginia and West Virginia. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted on the Maryland side by Washington, DC, which sits on land originally part of Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state, and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. A portion of extreme western Maryland in Garrett County is drained by the Youghiogheny River, as part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, while the remainder of the state drains, via the Bay, into the Atlantic Ocean. So prominent is the Chesapeake in Maryland's geography and economic life that there has been periodic agitation to change the state's official nickname to "Bay State", a name currently used by Massachusetts.

The highest point in Maryland is Backbone Mountain, which is the southwest corner of Garrett County, near the border with West Virginia and near the headwaters of the North Branch of the Potomac. In western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state, is a point at which the state is only two miles (3 km) wide. This geographical curiosity, which makes Maryland the narrowest state, is located near the small town of Hancock, and results from Maryland's northern and southern boundaries being marked by the Mason-Dixon Line and the north-arching Potomac River, respectively.

The Delmarva Peninsula comprises the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland, the entire state of Delaware, and two counties of Virginia, which together form a long extension down the Atlantic seaboard. One of the most noted features of Delmarva is Maryland's Assateague Island, on the Atlantic, with its herd of wild ponies accustomed to the seashore.