Planning your summer boating schedule? Four Rivers: The Heritage Area of Annapolis, London Town & South County urges you to pick up a copy of Landings: A Boater's Guide to the Four Rivers Heritage Area of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County. This free brochure provides boaters with an historical context to the western Chesapeake Bay shoreline from Sandy Point State Park to Herring Bay, along with information on accessing our heritage from the water. Landings includes a map of the heritage area shoreline with water-accessible heritage sites marked, along with contact information. Your onboard navigational charts, a copy of Landings, and a quick visit to the calendar of events on our website will give you a good idea of where to take your family and friends by boat this season.

Local boaters may know they can take a mooring or a slip, or dinghy in to City Dock and find a wealth of information on Annapolis history within walking distance. Insiders are aware that historic Galesville on the West River has a great anchorage and water access to heritage, restaurants and supplies. But visiting boaters, as well as locals, may not know that Historic London Town & Gardens on the South River and the Captain Salem Avery House on the West River offer piers to water-borne visitors and that the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center on the Rhode River has a paddler s water trail. They may not know that once-plush resorts at Bay Ridge and Fair Haven on Herring Bay received summer visitors by steamboat, that a local yacht yard's history began with piano-making (Hartge's on the West River), and that bringing family and friends to heritage-related events is sometimes as easy as docking a boat.

When it's time to burn your socks in Eastport, it's time to get your copy of Landings, said Donna Dudley, Four Rivers Executive Director. Our boater's guide was extremely popular last season with both sail and power boaters, and we hope to encourage more of them to visit our water-accessible heritage sites with friends and family this year.

Look for Landings at area heritage sites and visitor centers, and at Landings sponsors, including the Boatyard Bar & Grill in Eastport; Riverview Inn, Pirates Cove Restaurant & Marina, Hartge Yacht Yard and Homeport in Galesville; Historic Annapolis Foundation's HistoryQuest and Fawcett Boat Supplies in Annapolis; the South County Café in Deale, and Jack Martin & Associates Marine Insurance. Landings is also available for downloading from the newly-redesigned Four Rivers web site. The Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, Anne Arundel County and the City of Annapolis also supported the development of this regional heritage tourism product.

Four Rivers: The Heritage Area of Annapolis, London Town & South County , one of Maryland's 11 certified heritage areas, is part of the Maryland Heritage Areas Program, winner of Preserve America's 2006 Presidential Award for heritage tourism (www.preserveamerica.gov).

For more information or to request a mailed copy of Landings, please contact Executive Director Donna Dudley at 410-222-1805.