Proposed Trail of Capt. Smith's Bay Path, as He Saw It

Capt. John Smith sailed along the Potomac and Patuxent rivers and other tributaries of the Chesapeake, above. (By Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)

What does a "water trail" look like? For the most part, it seems, a whole lot of nothing.

But that's the thinking behind plans for a national historical trail that would follow the early-1600s explorations of Capt. John Smith around the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. The trail, as it's planned, will be detailed on maps and marked with a few signs and buoys, but little else will be done to signal the route.

That way, planners say, boaters retracing Smith's route might get an inkling of what the explorer saw.

The aim is "to try to get them to have a sense of what might the bay have been like 400 years ago," said Michael Shultz, a spokesman for the Conservation Fund, which has advocated for the trail. "So, in a sense, less is more, to allow more imagination."

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would establish the route as the country's 17th historical trail -- and the first not to include an inch of dry land. The Senate also may act this week. Southern Maryland seems likely to play a major role in the trail: Smith's boat hugged the Potomac River shoreline of Charles and St. Mary's counties and skimmed Calvert County's bay shore. Smith also explored the Patuxent River.

The trail, which would be named the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, would join a list of routes that include a path taken by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and one linking civil rights-era sites in Selma and Montgomery, Ala.

The exact route of the John Smith trail wouldn't be set until after it receives federal approval. In general, supporters said they want to include sites that Smith visited during four voyages between 1607 and 1609.

He left from the Jamestown colony in Virginia, at the bay's southern end. Smith, a leader among the colonists, had been ordered by backers in England to locate a "northwest passage" to the Pacific Ocean, to look for silver and gold and to explore the region around the colony. It was one of many such attempts to find a northwest passage in the Age of Exploration, and like others, Smith failed.

But, even in failure, Smith did something extraordinary: He managed to map and document the Chesapeake Bay region and its tributaries in astounding detail, reporting back that "heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a more perfect place for man's habitation."

The two most significant of his voyages were made in the summer of 1608. They took him and a small crew around much of the bay's shoreline and far up into tributary rivers; he passed through the modern-day states of Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, as well as the District. He even came within a few miles of present-day Pennsylvania, following the Susquehanna River up from the bay's northern end.

In all, the voyages are estimated to have covered more than 2,000 miles.

Supporters hope that the trail will be designated before ceremonies next year marking the 400th anniversary of the establishment of the Jamestown colony. Their vision includes guidebooks and maps to show boaters the way, as well as perhaps 10 or more "interpretive buoys" that could beam out information about Smith's voyages to boaters' cellphones. The same information would be available on the Internet.