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Maryland Communities
Maryland is a state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia to the south and west, Pennsylvania to the north, and Delaware to the east. It is comparable in size to the European country of Belgium. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Maryland has the highest median household income of any state, having surpassed New Jersey in 2006; Maryland's median household income was $68,080 in 2007. For 2009, Maryland ranked first—for the third year in a row—as the U.S. state with the highest median income for 2008, with a median income of $70,545. It was the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution and bears two nicknames, the Old Line State and the Free State.
Maryland is a life sciences hub with over 350 biotechnology firms, making it the third-largest such cluster in the nation. Institutions and agencies located throughout Maryland include the University of Maryland, The Johns Hopkins University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Celera Genomics, Human Genome Sciences (HGS), the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), MedImmune, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The majority of Maryland's population is concentrated in the cities and suburbs surrounding Washington, DC and Maryland's most populous city, Baltimore. Historically, these and many other Maryland cities developed along the fall line, the point at which rivers are no longer navigable from sea level due to the presence of rapids or waterfalls. Maryland's capital, Annapolis, is one exception to this rule, lying along the Severn River close to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. Other major population centers include suburban hubs Columbia in Howard County, Silver Spring, Rockville and Gaithersburg in Montgomery County, Frederick in Frederick County and Hagerstown in Washington County. The eastern, southern, and western portions of the state tend to be more rural, although they are dotted with cities of regional importance such as Salisbury and Ocean City on the Eastern Shore, Lexington Park and Waldorf in Southern Maryland, and Cumberland in Western Maryland.
Maryland’s history as a border state has led it to exhibit characteristics of both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States. Generally, rural Western Maryland between the West Virginian Panhandle and Pennsylvania has an Appalachian culture, the Southern and Eastern Shore regions of Maryland emulate a Southern culture, while densely-populated Central Maryland—radiating outward from Baltimore and Washington D.C.—has more in common with of the Northeast. The U.S. Census Bureau designates Maryland as one of the South Atlantic States, but it is commonly associated with the Mid-Atlantic States and/or Northeastern United States by other federal agencies, the media, and some residents. Source -Wikipedia
