For a state as small as it is, Maryland posses a great variety of topography. It ranges from sandy dunes dotted with seagrass in the east, to low marshlands teeming with water moccassins and large baldcypress 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. It shares a border near the center of the state along the Potomac with Washington, DC. 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. 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 line, is a point at which the state of Maryland is only two miles (3 km) wide. This geographical curiosity is located near the small town of Hancock.