Corriganville is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the count ...

(CDP) in Allegany County,

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 ...

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 territori ...

. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 455. Corriganville is part of the

Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area Cumberland, MD-WV MSA, or Cumberland Metro for short, is the Metropolitan Statistical Area of Cumberland, Maryland and the surrounding economic region of Allegany County, Maryland and Mineral County, West Virginia, in the United States. A Metrop ...

Geography

Corriganville lies north of Cumberland at the confluence of Wills Creek and

Jennings Run Jennings Run (Garrett County) and Jennings Run (Allegany County) are Maryland tributaries to Three Forks Run and Wills Creek, respectively. Jennings Run (Allegany County) begins near Frostburg. Mount Savage Run joins Jennings Run at Mount Sav ...

. Maryland Route 36 passes through Corriganville, and Maryland Route 35 heads north from there to Ellerslie.

Demographics

Cumberland Bone Cave

In 1912, workers excavating a cut for the

Western Maryland Railway The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad (1852–1983) which operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation. The WM beca ...

broke into a partly filled cave along the western slope of

Wills Mountain Wills Mountain is a quartzite-capped ridge in the Ridge and Valley physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania and Maryland, United States, extending from near Bedford, Pennsylvania, to near Cumberland, Maryland. It is t ...

, near Corriganville. A local naturalist,

Raymond Armbruster Raymond is a male given name. It was borrowed into English from French (older French spellings were Reimund and Raimund, whereas the modern English and French spellings are identical). It originated as the Germanic ᚱᚨᚷᛁᚾᛗᚢᚾᛞ ( ...

, observed fossil bones among the rocks that had been blasted loose and were being removed from the cut. Armbruster notified paleontologists at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, and James W. Gidley began excavating that same year. The cave later became known as the

Cumberland Bone Cave The Cumberland Bone Cave is a fossil-filled cave along the western slope of Wills Mountain on the outskirts of Cumberland, Maryland near Corriganville in Allegany County, Maryland. History and paleontology In 1912 workers excavating a cut for th ...

. Between 1912 and 1916, Gidley excavated the Cumberland Bone Cave, where 41 genera of mammals were found, about 16 per cent of which are extinct. Numerous excellent skulls and enough bones to reconstruct skeletons for a number of the species were present. Skeletons of the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

cave bear The cave bear (''Ursus spelaeus'') is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum. Both the word "cave" and the scientific name ' ...

and an extinct

saber-toothed cat Machairodontinae is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae (true cats). They were found in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe from the Miocene to the Pleistocene, living from about 16 million ...

from the Bone Cave are on permanent exhibit in the

Ice Age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

Mammal exhibit at the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

, Smithsonian Institution in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Many of the fossilized bones date from 200,000 years ago. The Cumberland Bone cave represents one of the finest Pleistocene-era faunas known from eastern North America.

Notable person

* Hometown of Sergeant Joseph Darby, who exposed the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

References

Census-designated places in Allegany County, Maryland Census-designated places in Maryland Populated places in the Cumberland, MD-WV MSA Cumberland, MD-WV MSA {{AlleganyCountyMD-geo-stub