Naming your streams and creeks: 
 Anne Arundel County Tidal Rivers Pilot Project

Download Magothy Creek Naming Powerpoint Presentation (1486K)

Who is involved
Started by Peter Bergstrom when he worked at US Fish & Wildlife Service
in Annapolis.  He is also the Volunteer Monitoring Coordinator for the Magothy River Association (MRA).  MRA along with the Severn River Association (SRA) and South River Federation (SRF) submitted a grant proposal to Chesapeake Bay Trust in 2001 to hire Chesapeake GIS to do the mapping work on the project.  The grant was funded and matched with funds from MRA, SRA, and SRF.  Colby Rucker, coauthor of Gems of the Severn, and Marianne Taylor, author of My River speaks: The history and lore of the Magothy River, assisted with historical research.

   

Magothy River Creek name (Anne Arundel County) ADC map book, map # & grid

NORTH SHORE 
Magothy Branch (Upper Magothy) 8-H11*
Muddy Run 8-K10*
Bailys Branch 9-B11*
Brookfield Branch 9-C11*
Beachwood Branch 9-D12*
Indian Village Branch 15-D1*
Cockey Creek 15-E2
Blackhole Creek 15-J3
Broad Creek 16-A4
Park Creek 16-B4
Grays Creek 16-C2
Cornfield Creek 10-G13, 16-G1
Magothy Narrows/Redhouse Cove 16-J2, H4

SOUTH SHORE 
Kinder Branch 8-J11*
Rouses Branch 8-J11*
Nannys Creek 9-B12*
Old Man Creek 14-K1
Cattail Creek 15-C3
Cypress Creek 15-D6
Dividing Creek 15-F8
Mill Creek 15-G7
Forked Creek 14-G6, 15-K8, 16-A7
Deep Creek 16-D10
Little Magothy River 16-J11

* not labeled on ADC map

Need
People care more about things and organisms that have names.  Many of the smaller creeks and streams draining to tidal waters in Anne Arundel County do not have names on maps, including nautical charts and topographic maps.  Most of the smaller creeks are not even shown on the ADC book maps.

Goals
The main goal of the project is to increase stewardship of local creeks, through finding and publicizing names for them. 

Methods
For the pilot project, we are seeking names for larger creeks draining to all of the Anne Arundel County tidal rivers: South shore of the Patapsco River, and all of the Magothy, Severn, South, Rhode, and West rivers.   The smallest creeks to be named are about 0.75 miles long and have a watershed of about 100 acres, and most of them are shown on USGS topographic maps.  We are also seeking names for selected coves and ponds on or near tidal waters.  We have found names for them from the two books mentioned above, tax maps, land plats and deeds, sewer and transportation maps, and names of nearby communities and other features.  A list of all the proposed changes will be submitted to the US Board of Geographic Names for their approval.  Once approved they will be added to the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) national database, which is online at: http://geonames.usgs.gov/gnishome.html  .This database is used by map makers as the basis for the names on their maps.  Having a feature named does not imply that it is open to public; it simply means that it may appear on future maps.

There were two main categories of changes: 1) naming additions, and 2) naming revisions. Naming additions were primarily features that were not identified in the previous GNIS. This group included many smaller county streams and ponds. However, there were also many large streams that had not been included in the GNIS, such as Warehouse Creek and Little Aberdeen Creek. Therefore, many names that show up as new additions on our map and in our database may have been in common use by county residents for decades. The second category, revisions, includes name misspellings, mis-placements, and other errors. A feature name may not have changed at all to classify as a revision, but the GNIS database may have shown it in the wrong location. Another type of revision was to add an “alias” for a water feature. Many water features are known by more than one name. We recorded as many of these alternate names as we could find. 

Follow up
The MRA submitted a grant proposal to CBT in 2002 to produce a hand drawn poster sized map of the Magothy showing all the approved water body names.  The grant was approved in May 2002.  Several MRA members volunteered in the DNR Stream Waders program in 2002 and sampled benthic macroinvertebrates in several of the Magothy streams that are being named in this project.  MRA will ask highway departments to erect signs at the creeks that have road crossings, but highway departments are sometimes reluctant to do this unless there is water clearly visible from the road.

Peter Bergstrom can be reached at: 410-267-5665 (days) or
peter.bergstrom@noaa.gov or at NOAA CBO, 410 Severn Ave. Suite 107A,
Annapolis, MD 21403. 

Chesapeake GIS can be reached at: 410-956-3917 or info@chesapeakegis.com or Chesapeake GIS, P.O. Box 1573, Edgewater, MD 21037. Paula Hill Jasinski is the project coordinator through Chesapeake GIS.