Chesapeake Map
Chesapeake is what happened when a county and a small city merged into one: a Hampton Roads city so large in area that farms, swamp and suburbs all sit inside its limits.
Where is Chesapeake?
Chesapeake is in the southeastern corner of Virginia, in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, with Norfolk and Portsmouth to the north, Virginia Beach to the east, and the North Carolina line forming its southern boundary. Richmond is about 90 miles northwest up Interstate 64, and Washington some 200 miles north. The Outer Banks of North Carolina begin roughly 70 miles to the south.
Chesapeake at a glance
| State | Virginia |
| County | None — Chesapeake is an independent city, outside any county |
| Population | 254,997 (2024 Census estimate) |
| Rank among US cities | No. 92 of the 100 largest |
| Time zone | Eastern Time |
| Region | South (South Atlantic division) |
Chesapeake in Virginia
Virginia is the state where cities and counties are separate: an incorporated city belongs to no county at all, which is why Chesapeake, Norfolk, Richmond and Virginia Beach appear as their own units on the Virginia county map. Chesapeake exists because the city of South Norfolk and all of Norfolk County voted to merge in 1963, which put the county's rural land inside city limits in one stroke and made this the second most populous city in the state. The Virginia state page explains the independent-city system.
The Dismal Swamp and the Intracoastal Waterway
The southern third of the city is the northern end of the Great Dismal Swamp, a peat-floored wetland straddling the state line with Lake Drummond at its center — one of only two sizeable natural lakes in Virginia. The Dismal Swamp Canal, cut through it to link the Chesapeake Bay watershed to Albemarle Sound in North Carolina, is among the oldest artificial waterways still in use in the country, and the parallel Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal now carries the main Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway route through Chesapeake. North of the swamp the land is flat coastal plain drained by the Elizabeth River's southern branch, tidal and only a few feet above sea level, which is why drainage and flooding dominate local planning.
Cities near Chesapeake
The Hampton Roads neighbors are Norfolk, Virginia Beach and, up the James, Richmond; Raleigh and Durham lie southwest in North Carolina. See the Atlantic coast page for the shoreline they share.