The Patapsco River rises near the town of Westminster in Carroll County, MD, and flows generally southeast for about 65 miles to enter Chesapeake Bay. The mean range of tide is 2.8 feet at the Cape Henry Channel, 2.3 feet at the York Spit Channel, 1.4 feet at the Rappahannock Shoal Channel, 0.8 loot at the Craighill Entrance, 0.9 foot in the Cutoff Section, 1.l feet at Fort McHenry, and 1.2 feet at Pooles Island in the upper Chesapeake Bay.
Depths refer to mean low water.
The Port of Baltimore has 45 miles of waterfront of which 25 miles are industrially developed. The existing ground storage is equivalent to 53,700 railroad cars of cargo. There are 31 public general merchandise warehouses, with 4.9 mil-lion square feet of storage space and 4.7 million cubic feet of cold storage space. Eight ship-building, ship repair, and ship dismantling yards are available for handling up to 90 vessels. The two grain elevators in the port have a capacity of about 8 million bushels.