Cunningham Falls State Park is a public recreation area located west of Thurmont,

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The

state park State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...

is the home of Cunningham Falls, the largest cascading waterfall in Maryland, a man-made lake, and the remains of a historic

iron furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric p ...

. The park is one of several protected areas occupying 50-mile-long

Catoctin Mountain Catoctin Mountain, along with the geologically associated Bull Run Mountains, forms the easternmost mountain ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are in turn a part of the Appalachian Mountains range. The ridge runs northeast–southwest for ...

; it is bordered on its north by

Catoctin Mountain Park Catoctin Mountain Park, located in north-central Maryland, is part of the forested Catoctin Mountain ridge−range that forms the northeastern rampart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the Appalachian Mountains System. Approximately 5120 acres o ...

and on its south by Frederick Municipal Forest.

History

Before the arrival of European settlers, Native Americans used the Catoctin Mountain area for hunting and fishing and also quarried it for

rhyolite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...

to make projectile points. During the 19th century, settlers began cutting the area's forests for charcoal to power the Catoctin Iron Furnace. "Charcoal flats"—square areas measuring approximately , cut flat into the hillsides and linked by mule trails—were used to build charcoal kilns. The charcoal flats can still be seen in the park. Over two hundred years of abuse of the forest led to the destruction of the land. In the 1930s, after years of

clearcutting Clearcutting, clearfelling or clearcut logging is a forestry/ logging practice in which most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down. Along with shelterwood and seed tree harvests, it is used by foresters to create certain types of fore ...

for the making of

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...

, mountain farming, and timber harvesting, the land was purchased by the Federal government. Beginning in 1935, workers with the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

and the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...

began constructing the Catoctin

Recreational Demonstration Area The Recreational Demonstration Area program (also known as the Recreation Demonstration Area program) was a National Park Service program during the 1930s and early 1940s that built forty-six public parks in twenty-four states on , chiefly near urba ...

to transform the area for recreational use. The site's northern portion was transferred to the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

on November 14, 1936, and renamed and reorganized on July 12, 1954, as

. The southern were transferred to Maryland as Cunningham Falls State Park.

Features

Cunningham Falls State Park - view from the top

Known locally as McAfee Falls, after a family of early settlers, Cunningham Falls was apparently named after a photographer from Pen Mar Park who frequently photographed the falls. An old homestead can be seen above the falls. There is an abandoned iron mine located in the park in addition to the ruins of the third Catoctin iron furnace, owned and constructed by Jacob Kinkel, in the 1850s-1860s.

Activities and amenities

Recreational activities include hiking, hunting, swimming, boating, fishing, and camping. Big Hunting Creek, one of Maryland's premier trout streams, flows through the park.

References

External links

Cunningham Falls State Park
Maryland Department of Natural Resources
Cunningham Falls State Park Map
Maryland Department of Natural Resources * {{authority control State parks of Maryland Parks in Frederick County, Maryland Blue Ridge Mountains Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Landforms of Frederick County, Maryland State parks of the Appalachians Protected areas established in 1954 1954 establishments in Maryland Civilian Conservation Corps in Maryland Works Progress Administration in Maryland IUCN Category V

History

Features

Activities and amenities

Further reading

References

External links