Of Maryland’s 23 counties, 16 border the tidal shore. So, to, do the state’s largest city, Baltimore and its capital, Annapolis. The Atlantic shoreline is only 31 miles. When you include the shoreline along the rivers and bays you get a whooping 3,190 miles. Every the contrary one, I opted to visited Maryland’s mountainous western arm. Cumberland, an industrial city sitting on the North branch of the Potomac is surrounded by steep mountains, was the second largest city in the state at the time of the Civil War. Washington crossed the Potomac and so did I. The river makes up the state line between West Virginia and Maryland creating an unlikely peninsula of WV. Cumberland was the terminus of the C&O Canal and the heart of the B&O Railroad (Monopoly anyone?).
From Cumberland, Centre Street (Alt Hwy 40) follows the roadbed of the first federally funded highway, the National Road, constructed in the early 1800’s. The National Road was built along an Indian footpath. The town of Frostburg, a few miles to the west, was developed around the site of a National Road Inn built by Meshach Frost. The town was a center of western Maryland’s coal mining industry and is now the home of Frostburg State University. My home du jour, the Frostburg Hampton Inn, sits just off the freeway on the edge of town. I went for a run through the very small and somewhat dilapidated heart of Frostburg and skirted the university. I’m sure it’s a wonderful place to many but I was not charmed. Perhaps I missed something?
The Appalachian Trail passes through a narrow section of the state. The trail meanders through Gathland State Park, Washington Monument State Park and South Mountain State Park. 20.47 miles of The Great Allegheny Passage run between the Mason Dixon Line and Cumberland.
You want trivia? I’ve got it…
“Maryland is for crabs” is the response to the southern neighbor, Virginia. Literally speaking, the state is for crabs. The Maryland blue variety is the state crustacean. In addition to a state crustacean, they also pays homage to local maritime history with a designated state boat: the skipjack. Don’t forget the state dog, the Chesapeake Bay retriever.
Maryland was the first state in the union to adopt an income tax in 1938.
The Chincoteague ponies on Assateague Island caught my girlhood horse crazy imagination. The horses descend from a 16th century herd that swam ashore from a sinking Spanish galleon. At least that’s the rumor.
From 1763 to 1767 Charles Mason and Jeremiah surveyed Maryland’s border with Pennsylvania, charted a line over 200 miles long known as the Mason-Dixon line.
The first successful manned balloon launch in the U.S. took place in Baltimore on June 24, 1784.
The 50 States of Literature choice for Maryland gave me what I enjoy most about a “state book:” a good read that’s relevant to my trip. Here’s the recommendation:
Exploring in Maryland By Melanie Jones
Barnaby Gaitlin is the focus of Ann Tyler’s fourteenth and perhaps most endearing book, A Patchwork Planet. As a teenager, Barnaby’s need to connect with others led to his arrest for breaking and entering to snoop into neighbors’ photo albums. Now thirty and divorced, his work at Rent-A-Back, an assistance service for the elderly, provides him with the appreciation and understanding which his well-to-do family is unable to do. His work is the one bright point in his life until Sophia, his new girlfriend and possible “guardian angel,” enters the scene and revitalizes his burnout existence. Like all Tyler’s novels, Planet is set in Maryland. The quiet neighborhood outside of Baltimore serves to nestle Barnaby with its “big, tall spruce trees” and “damp, chilly feel” that leaves a permanent mist on car windows. More so than the land itself, however, the northeast crispness of Baltimore attitude, which leaves characters like Barnaby’s clients more satisfyingly prickly than cuddly, serves as the perfect setting for the struggles of a promising loser. “What I wanted to know was,” Barnaby asks, “couldn’t people change? Did they have to settle for just being who they were forever, from cradle to grave?” In the end, the grace he has been searching for reveals itself like the quilt of the earth which a patient has made: “makeshift and haphazard, clumsily crowded together, overlapping,” but “pretty in an offbeat unexpected way.”
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