Bucolic landscapes, Civil War history, recreational opportunities and small-town pleasures await travelers in Frederick and Washington counties.
Being a hiking enthusiast, history hound and fan of quaint little towns, I found lots to like during my recent trip to north-central Maryland, a part of the state that seems light years away from the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. metro area.
When many of us think of Maryland, we think Baltimore, Annapolis and other cities on the Chesapeake Bay. But I was traveling through the farmscapes and forested mountains to the west—specifically Frederick and Washington counties. Bordered by Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, the region is a tantalizing blend of Appalachian and sophistication.
I based myself in Frederick and from there made easy excursions through the tranquil green countryside that starts right outside the city limits. Though Frederick is Maryland’s second-largest city (population 80,000), the friendly vibe and sense of community give it a small-town feel.
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Carroll Creek Park, downtown Frederick. (Photo credit: Visit Frederick)
Exploring Historic Frederick, Maryland
Downtown Frederick boasts a 50-square-block historic area loaded with 19th century buildings, including brick row houses and churches sporting stately spires. Extremely walkable, the district abounds with specialty shops and restaurants. Its crown jewel is Carroll Creek Park, whose landscaped promenades invite strolling on both sides of the creek. Clustered at one end are several breweries and a distillery. A hub for concerts and other special events, the linear park claims the largest free water garden in the world, featuring picture-perfect lily pads and exotic vegetation from the Amazon jungles.
Some 250 independent businesses are scattered throughout downtown Frederick. Many of the 75 restaurants have sidewalk tables, perfect for people-watching. One evening I found my outdoor perch at the patio of Brewer’s Alley, a brewpub set in a landmark building that formerly hosted a marketplace, city hall and opera house. Ethnic choices in the neighborhood include Sumittra Thai Cuisine, Sabor de Cuba for Cuban cuisine and Isabella’s Taverna & Tapas Bar for tastes of Spain.
One of my favorite retail discoveries was The Spice & Tea Exchange, where I encountered not only exotic teas and seasonings but candles made from them, plus cinnamon-vanilla and other flavored maple syrups. My sweet tooth was attracted to The Candy Kitchen, which has been making hand-dipped chocolates, saltwater taffy and fudge since 1937.
At Retro Metro, a fun gift shop, I bought socks and other souvenirs incorporating Maryland’s distinctive state flag, the only one based on heraldic emblems. Its design in gold, black, red and white is taken from the shield in the coat-of-arms of the Calvert family, the colonial proprietors of Maryland.
Heritage Frederick’s Museum of Frederick County History is a good place to start for delving into the city’s past. Downtown walking tours are available.
National Museum of Civil War Medicine, downtown Frederick. (Randy Mink Photo)
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine, a downtown must-see, provides fascinating insights into early medical practices and the human suffering caused by the 1861-1865 war that tore the country apart. For one thing, you learn that two-thirds of the 700,000-some soldier deaths resulted from diseases spread by unsanitary conditions in crowded camps, not bullets and bayonets. Many succumbed to dysentery.
Major advances developed during the war—like the design of prosthetic limbs and a triage system for treating the wounded—changed medicine and battlefield evacuation techniques forever. Amputations were the most common surgery performed in field hospitals, almost all of them done with the patient under some form of anesthesia, mainly chloroform or ether inhaled through a cloth.
Thousands of wounded Civil War soldiers were treated in homes, barns, churches and places of business in Frederick and other towns in the region. The stories of soldiers, surgeons and civilians come to life on the museum’s “One Vast Hospital Walking Tour.”
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Antietam: Carnage in the Cornfields
Many of those needing care were wounded at Antietam Creek, the site of an infamous battle. Antietam National Battlefield memorializes the men who participated in the bloodiest single-day conflict in American history (September 17, 1862). Of the nearly 100,000 Union and Confederate Army soldiers fighting in the farmlands near Sharpsburg, about 23,000 were killed, wounded or missing.
As a Massachusetts infantryman wrote to his father: “The slaughter was more awful than anything I ever read about….there is no place where you can stand and not see the field black with dead bodies as far as the eye can reach.”
Antietam National Battlefield. (Photo credit: National Park Service)
Antietam, one of America’s most beautiful and best preserved battlefields, today is peaceful, almost idyllic. The National Park Service site contains dozens of stone monuments—many crowned by rifle-toting or sword-wielding soldiers—and interpretive panels alongside a self-guiding tour route threading fields planted with corn, soybeans and wheat. One monument honors Clara Barton, “Angel of the Battlefield,” who brought bandages, lanterns and food to field hospitals and in 1881 founded the American Red Cross. Antietam’s newly renovated visitor center offers ranger talks, exhibits and a movie about the epic 12-hour battle.
On a happier note, my next stop was Bonnie’s at the Red Byrd, a roadside diner that’s been dishing out home cooking since 1958. At this Keedysville landmark decorated with cardinal knickknacks, I ordered the fried country ham sandwich platter, though the homemade BBQ pork and Wednesday specials (all-you-can-eat fried chicken and “slippery chicken” pot pie) were tempting. I saved room for chocolate meringue pie.
Main Street in Boonsboro
On the way to Boonsboro, I stopped at Crystal Grottoes Caverns for a cool 45-minute tour of Maryland’s only show cave. Then I spent an hour or so exploring Boonsboro’s Main Street with a walking tour brochure in hand. Established in 1792, the town thrived during the mid-1800s when the National Road, the nation’s first federally funded highway, brought prosperity. Now U.S. Route 40 and a Maryland Scenic Byway, the National Road, once busy with horse-drawn wagons and stagecoaches, crossed six states between Baltimore and St. Louis. The new National Road Museum is set to open soon on Main Street, joining other points of interest on the historic roadway’s path through town.
Boonsborough Museum of History. (Randy Mink Photo)
Groups can arrange a tour of the Boonsborough Museum of History, whose eclectic collections focus on local history but also include medieval and ancient Egyptian artifacts. In old-school glass cases, Civil War relics identified by labels probably typewritten decades ago range from rifles, pistols and swords to a cannonball lodged in wood, a battle-carried drum and the bone of a Confederate soldier killed at Antietam. You’ll see a mummified amputated human arm, iron neck braces that shackled slaves and a desk made out of the wood from the gallows used to hang abolitionist John Brown, who was convicted of treason for leading a raid on the federal armory at nearby Harpers Ferry in 1859.
Housed in an 1882 Victorian house on Main Street, the treasures were amassed by the late furniture store owner Doug Bast (1937-2011), a passionate collector who started as a boy. The museum’s annex building next door, once the Bast of Boonsboro furniture store, is loaded with even more rare objects, letters and documents. Plans call for making the first floor a museum space.
Boonsboro’s current claim to fame revolves around a famous resident, best-selling romance novelist Nora Roberts. She and her husband own a bookstore, a gift shop featuring the works of local artists and Inn BoonsBoro, an eight-room, literary-themed boutique property that occupies a former hotel popular during National Road boom years, all on Main Street. The bookstore, Turn the Page, carries all Roberts’ books in print, including those written under the pseudonym J.D. Robb.
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War Correspondents Memorial Arch, Gathland State Park. (Randy Mink Photo)
South Mountain Parks and Inviting Small Towns
Not far from Boonsboro, more Civil War history surfaces at South Mountain State Battlefield, which stretches between Washington Monument State Park (home to the first monument to honor George Washington) and Gathland State Park. The castle-like War Correspondents Memorial Arch at Gathland, dedicated in 1896, is inscribed with names of journalists killed in war. Museums across the road chronicle the Battle of South Mountain (waged three days before Antietam) and the life of noted Civil War correspondent George Alfred Townsend. Located in the northern Blue Ridge range, South Mountain claims a portion of the famed Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the 2,180-mile footpath that traverses the Eastern United States from Maine to Georgia.
Middletown and Burkittsville, two towns bursting with historical charm, merit a stop in the South Mountain area. Their churches and houses served as field hospitals during the Civil War.
Burkittsville, a rural village of 180 residents, has changed little since its founding in the mid-1800s. Tours of the South Mountain Heritage Society Museum, housed in a stately former church dating from 1860, can be arranged for groups. A popular wedding venue, it has a vintage hand-pumped organ.
Historic Middletown, Maryland. (Photo credit: Visit Frederick)
Main Street in Middletown, population 4,900, abounds with metal plaques and informational panels that chronicle the town’s history. The prominent white steeple of the 1859 Zion Lutheran Church dominates the streetscape.
Begin your Middletown visit at the brand new welcome center, which occupies a converted barber shop. A favorite lunch/dinner stop for tour groups is The Main Cup, a restaurant inside a former ice cream factory that closed in 1969. The factory’s neon sign, however, still lights up Main Street. Across the street, enjoy a cone or sundae on the wraparound porch at More Ice Cream, one of five establishments on Middletown’s Ice Cream Passport. On a family farm outside of town, South Mountain Creamery draws crowds with its country store/ice cream shop. Barn tours offer a chance to feed the calves. There’s a corn maze in September and October.
Before leaving Middletown, take a drive past some of the grand old mansions on East Main Street. In its heyday, the town was an important stop on the old National Road.
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Northern Maryland is a Hiker’s Paradise
C&O Canal National Historical Park’s scenic hiking/biking trails hug the Potomac River for 184 miles from Cumberland, Maryland to Georgetown in D.C. One day I drove a segment of the C&O Canal Scenic Byway, getting off at two places for hikes along the old towpath to locks, lockhouses and aqueducts that once served boat traffic on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. For lunch, I stopped in the historic canal town of Brunswick and rewarded myself with a scrumptious turkey, cheese and cranberry panini in a former church turned cafe, Beans in the Belfry.
Catoctin Mountain Park, near Thurmont and just south of the Pennsylvania border, provided my favorite hikes in northern Maryland. Panoramic lookout points have to be reached on foot, as there are no roadside overlooks for motorists. The most popular trail leads to Chimney Rock.
Driving through the park under leafy canopies, I passed a road posted with a “Do Not Enter – Restricted Area” sign and noticed a “No Photography” icon as well as a park police car. Having read some travel guidebooks in advance, I knew the “secret” road led to Camp David, the country retreat of U.S. presidents since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The park’s visitor center carries two books on Camp David, but park personnel, understandably, are mum when the subject comes up.
Hiking at Chimney Rock, Catoctin Mountain Park. (Photo credit: Visit Frederick)
Catoctin Mountain Park, a National Park Service unit, adjoins Cunningham Falls State Park, where one trail traverses a pedestrian bridge over U.S. Route 15 on the way to Catoctin Furnace Village. A fascinating historical attraction representing the early days of the Industrial Revolution, the village comprises ruins of the old iron-smelting furnace and ironmaster’s house, plus the Museum of the Ironworker and workers’ cottages that now are mostly private residences. The furnace, in operation from 1775-1903, provided ammunition to General George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
On view at the museum (inside an original stone cottage) are cast-iron stoves, cannonballs and tools produced at the furnace. Next door, a working blacksmith’s shop opens for special events. Behind the museum, the African American Cemetery Trail pays homage to the skilled slaves who toiled in the furnace under hot, dirty conditions.
Also at Catoctin Furnace Village, the restored 1820 Forgeman’s House, furnished with antiques, offers overnight accommodations. Guided group tours of the village, including the 1810 Collier’s Log House with its historic kitchen garden, can be arranged. (Colliers were the men who made the charcoal that fueled the furnace.)
The state park’s namesake Cunningham Falls, at 78 feet the tallest cascading waterfall in Maryland, is easily accessible via a short path from the falls parking lot. Across the road, Hunting Creek Lake offers a sand beach and boat rentals. The park is so popular that it has to turn away people on some weekends.
Neighboring Gambrill State Park also beckons lovers of the great outdoors.
Groups in the Thurmont area may want to make a stop at Catoctin Mountain Orchard, a roadside produce market where I bought some apple cider donuts and a jar of apple jelly. They offer pick-your-own apples in September and October, cherries and berries in June and July.
For lunch in Thurmont, I feasted on the buffet at Mountain Gate Family Restaurant, a spacious place with plenty of room for large groups. Besides a generous salad bar, the smorgasbord groans with indulgent options, from fried chicken and meatloaf to scrumptious baked beans and decadent mac ’n’ cheese. I must have had six or seven (small) pieces of pie. Among the 15-plus choices: coconut cream, coconut custard, lemon meringue and chocolate pecan. And then there were the cobblers and puddings, which I also had to sample.
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By Randy Mink, Senior Editor
Lead Photo – C&O Canal National Historical Park, Lockhouse 28. (Photo credit: Visit Frederick)
