Hancock: Where Maryland Nearly Disappears

At Hancock, Maryland shrinks to less than two miles wide, the narrowest border-to-border width of any state in the country. Pennsylvania sits just a short walk north, West Virginia just as close to the south. Settlers arrived here in the seventeen thirties, trading along the Potomac.

The town was first called William's Town, then renamed for Edward Hancock, a Revolutionary War veteran. The National Pike brought a wave of westbound travelers, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal reached Hancock by eighteen thirty-nine, locking in the town's role as a hub where road, water, and later rail converged in that impossibly thin sliver of Maryland.