Some early 20th-century historians promoted the idea that the early Spanish explorers who made voyages into the Chesapeake Bay between 1565 and 1570 sailed up the Potomac River as far as Occoquan, Virginia, based on the similarity between "Axacan" of the Spanish missionary chronicles and the name of the Indian town and creek on the Potomac.
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In 1499, Amerigo Vespucci for the Spanish Crown spent thirty-seven days repairing their ships at the Chesapeake Bay.