By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 7, 2006

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.

The chairman emeritus of the Conservation Fund, Patrick F. Noonan, told a House committee this fall that the first three buoys could be set up this spring in Jamestown, the Potomac River and the northern bay.

Beyond that, planners say, the trail will cause few physical changes and cost relatively little.

"The beauty of the water trail idea is that these are public waters, so we don't have the cost," Noonan said in an interview.

Still, even without major construction plans, the trail is expected to cost about $2 million between 2007 and 2011, according to its backers. About $400,000 of that would be spent on the initial planning, and $500,000 a year would be needed for operating it after 2009. All of that would be paid for by the National Park Service.

Officials in the various counties along the bay and its tributaries hope that the trail would bring tourists to shop, sail, eat and stay overnight.

In August, Calvert County officials launched efforts to capitalize on the tourism and attention a planned reenactment of Smith's historic journey could bring.

Calvert will be featured in at least two extended stops during a reenactment of Smith's travels of 1607 to 1609. A group of 14 historians, naturalists and educators will retrace Smith's route along the Chesapeake and its tributaries. Using only oars and a sail on a shallop (a 30-foot open boat) that is a replica of Smith's Discovery Barge, the group's main goal will be to educate people along the way.

Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum on the Patuxent River will be one of two stops in Calvert. The museum began construction last year on an Indian village that will depict the way area tribes lived centuries ago. Smith documented more than 200 Native American villages during his travels.