State buys 4,400 acres of waterfront from Jesuits

The Board of Public Works Wednesday gave final approval to the $57 million purchase of 4,473 acres of some of Maryland’s most historic open space, including 19 miles of Potomac River shoreline in St. Mary’s and Charles counties.

Along with 975 acres in Cecil County, the land has been owned for more than three centuries by the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, the Catholic religious order whose members accompanied the state’s first colonists.