Anne Arundel County wants visitors to treat its 250-year-old history like a scavenger hunt. Visit Annapolis & Anne Arundel County has launched the Be Revolutionary: America 250 Exploration Trail, a free mobile pass linking more than 50 historic, cultural, and community sites across the county, with prizes awaiting anyone who checks in at enough stops before the year is out.
The trail launched on March 19 and runs through December 31, marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, according to Eye On Annapolis. Participating locations include museums, archives, farms, breweries, libraries, and waterfront landmarks, each sharing its own revolutionary story through interpretive displays. Sites carry playful trail verbs describing their role, with the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum set to echo, Arundel Mills captivating visitors, the Anne Arundel County Free School Museum educating, the Annapolis Maritime Museum & Park propelling the story forward, and Annapolis Pride, hosted by Leo Annapolis, evolving the narrative.
How the Digital Pass Works
The free Bandwango mobile pass, powered by Visit Annapolis & Anne Arundel County, requires no app download. It includes a map of participating sites along with location details, hours, and a QR-based check-in system that tracks points automatically. Visitors can sign up through the Visit Annapolis & Anne Arundel County America 250 website or by scanning QR codes posted on trail panels at each site, and each stop is worth 100 points.
Travelers may check in only once per person at each location, and prizes kick in as participants climb the leaderboard: a limited-edition sticker set, a commemorative gift bag, and a Be Revolutionary Yeti mug await those who reach 13, 25, and 50 sites respectively. Anyone still chasing points has a cushion, too — visitors get an extra 30 days after December 31, 2026, to redeem their prizes. That web-based approach, delivered via SMS and email rather than an app-store download, is designed to remove friction for casual tourists while letting organizers track real-time check-ins, according to Chesapeake Inspired.
Why Annapolis Has the Receipts
Unlike many towns chasing a slice of the national semiquincentennial spotlight, Annapolis can point to the actual paperwork. The city served as the temporary capital of the United States from November 1783 to August 1784, and it was inside the Maryland State House on December 23, 1783, that General George Washington resigned his military commission — a voluntary surrender of power that, as reported by The Washington Post, established a foundational precedent for American democracy. Weeks later, on January 14, 1784, the Continental Congress convened in that same building to ratify the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the Revolutionary War, according to the Maryland State Art Collection.
The county's defiant streak predates the war itself. On October 19, 1774, local patriots forced merchant Anthony Stewart to burn his own ship, the Peggy Stewart, in Annapolis harbor as punishment for paying the British tea tax — an episode often called the Annapolis Tea Party, per the Maryland State Art Collection. The trail's organizers are pairing that deep well of founding-era history with newer additions to the local landscape, including the Banneker-Douglass Museum, which expanded its name in 2026 to the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum to incorporate Harriet Tubman and secured Maryland 250 grant funding for dedicated research fellowships, according to Maryland state records.
Breweries and Grants Fill Out the Map
The trail is not confined to formal museums. Local craft breweries including Chesepiooc Real Ale Brewery in Crofton and Crooked Crab Brewing Company in Odenton rolled out limited-edition colonial beer series for America 250 in June 2026, among them a tavern ale brewed from surviving 18th-century recipes attributed to George Washington, the same Eye On Annapolis reporting notes. The physical panels that anchor the trail at each site trace back to a grant awarded in November 2025, when the Chesapeake Crossroads Heritage Area distributed $31,400 in mini-grants to 11 local organizations, including $5,000 to Visit Annapolis & Anne Arundel County specifically to produce the Be Revolutionary interpretive signage, according to the outlet's earlier coverage. Grant recipients were required to match those funds dollar for dollar, leveraging an additional $134,000 in local cultural investment across the county.
The trail also carries backing from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, the Annapolis 250 Commission, and the Maryland 250 Commission, whose statewide guidelines offer $7,500 fellowship grants for host institutions and $500 mini-grants for municipalities to promote civic engagement and inclusive local history. Kristen Pironis, CEO of Visit Annapolis & Anne Arundel County, said the anniversary offers an opportunity to celebrate the ideas and individuals that helped shape the nation.
A Big Economic Bet on Local History
The push comes as tourism has become a dominant force in the county's economy. Anne Arundel County hosted more than 7.2 million visitors in 2024 who generated $4.3 billion in total economic impact — roughly 20 percent of Maryland's entire visitor economy — according to a Tourism Economics report cited by CBS News. That spending supports more than 27,000 local jobs and generates over $860 million in combined federal, state, and local taxes annually, the same report found.
Anne Arundel is not alone in trying to cash in on the semiquincentennial. Neighboring Mid-Atlantic destinations are rolling out their own coordinated campaigns this summer, including Baltimore's Sail 250 tall ship festival and regional heritage passports spanning Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, according to the Mid-Atlantic Tourism Public Relations Alliance. Tourism groups across the region are packaging historic sites, drone shows, and mobile passes to lure the same pool of drive-market visitors, meaning Anne Arundel's 50-plus-site trail will be competing for attention well into the fall and winter as the anniversary year winds toward its close.
