Qualla: Wicomico County, Maryland

Wicomico County, Maryland: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. Wicomico means a place where houses are built. The county takes its name from the Wicomico River, which takes its name from the Algonquian phrase wicko mekee - a description, originally, of a Native American town on the riverbank where the people made permanent homes. The English newcomers never quite recorded which town. They kept the river name and gave it to the county that was finally carved out of Somerset and Worcester in 1867. A place where houses are built. The new county built more than 100,000 of them, eventually. The river kept the original meaning even as the buildings changed hands.

Image: Tim Kiser (User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Wicomico County, Maryland: The Last County

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Fischer, CC BY 2.0. Maryland created its last Eastern Shore county on August 17, 1867. The General Assembly carved Wicomico out of the northern portion of Somerset County and the western portion of Worcester County, partly to give the booming railroad town of Salisbury its own seat of government. Sa...

Image: Eric Fischer | CC BY 2.0

Wicomico County, Maryland: The Mason-Dixon Midpoint

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kej605, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wicomico County's northern boundary follows two of the most famous surveyed lines in American history. The county shares a border with Sussex County, Delaware. Part of that border is the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary between Maryland and Delaware-Pennsylvania surveyed by Charles...

Image: Kej605 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wicomico County, Maryland: Perdue Farms and the Poultry Engine

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lee Cannon from Bayville aka West Fenwick, DE, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Perdue Farms is headquartered in Salisbury and is the largest employer headquartered in Wicomico County, with nearly 22,000 employees nationwide. The company was founded by Arthur W. Perdue in 1920 with fifty laying hens behind his Salisbury home. By 1971, when his son Frank Perd...

Image: Lee Cannon from Bayville aka West Fenwick, DE, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wicomico County, Maryland: Piedmont Airlines and the Regional Airport

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Piedmont Airlines, the regional carrier that operates as American Eagle on behalf of American Airlines, is headquartered at the Salisbury-Ocean City-Wicomico Regional Airport. The original Piedmont was founded in 1948 in Winston-Salem and merged into US Airways in 1989; the curre...

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Wicomico County, Maryland: Television Capital of Delmarva

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AviationFreak, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 103,588 residents Wicomico County recorded in the 2020 census make it the largest county on Maryland's Lower Shore by population. Salisbury, the county seat, is the largest city. The county's media economy reflects its centrality: most of the Delmarva television market's majo...

Image: AviationFreak | CC BY-SA 4.0