History at Hand

is now an 800-acre museum, Historic St. Mary’s City. Features include archaeological digs, a replica , a reconstruction of a]. Nearby St. Clement’s Island Museum on the Potomac shore adjoining its namesake land mass focuses on early Maryland history and the state’s riverine heritage—[]. St. Clement’s Island itself, where the passengers and crew of Ark and first landed, is a Maryland state park and is accessible by boat. Tour boats depart from the museum weekends in season. Sotterley Plantation, built about 1703, is open in season; visitors can tour the plantation house and gardens, as well as the places where enslaved African-Americans lived and worked []. Point Lookout, a state park where the Potomac River meets Chesapeake Bay, includes a recreation of portions of a Civil War prison camp that held Confederate POWs []. In Lexington Park, eight miles north of St. Mary’s City, Patuxent River Naval Air Museum chronicles naval aviation since World War II, with special attention to the military test pilots trained at Patuxent River Naval Air Station who became astronauts [].