The North Branch of the Potomac River separates Garrett County, MD from West Virginia. In the late 1800s and through the early 1950s, it was dotted by numerous small lumbering and coal-mining towns. My goal was to trace the Upper Potomac, and these towns, as far as I could.
It's always good to get an early start...
I slabbed it out to Cumberland and spent a little time looking around this town. The stately homes along Washington Street were particularly noteworthy; this was just one of many:
From Cumberland, my route took me south on 220, following the Potomac more or less closely. I took a side detour on Black Oak Road, to get a good look at the river. It's probably just as well that I didn't notice the "Private Property - No Trespassing" sign on the bridge... Who would have such an elaborate, private bridge anyway?
The North Branch of the Potomac was fairly wide and impressive at this point on my upstream travel.
Before long I came to Luke, MD. You don't realize how quaint and scenic these small towns can be until you ride through them...
Moving on to the nearby town of Bloomington, I went looking for the stone railroad bridge built by B&O in about 1850 and still in use today. It proved quite elusive--from several vantage points I could see only a distant portion of it. I finally decided that this path must offer a way to the bridge. Discretion being the better part of valor, I opted to tackle this muddy grade on foot.
After reaching the bottom of the steep and slippery path, I found the river. After wading into the mild rapids a couple of yards, I was able to get the following shot of two-thirds of the bridge. Geez--the things I do to get pictures for you all!
Back on the road, now on the WV side of the river, I began climbing the mountain bordering the river. I stopped here to admire the view and to see what had become of the guard rails. Those aren't bushes in the background--they're the tops of trees.
A sinuous trek through the mountains, on decently paved roads, brought me to Barnum, WV, which was once a prosperous coal-mining town. Except, now, this was the only evidence I could find that there ever was a town here:
Here is the similarly long-lost town of Shaw, WV. To quote from Ghost Towns, in the late 1990s, Bloomington Dam and the resulting Jennings Randolph Lake "made Shaw a memory."
I recrossed the Potomac into Maryland at the twin towns of Blaine, WV and Kitzmiller, MD. There were still a number of houses here, but generally they were newer replacements, and only a few of the older original buildings survived the disastrous flood of March 1924. A rocky and somewhat narrower Potomac was in evidence, but there was little sign of the quaint town pictured in the book. Note the rustic building on the far bank of the river, however: I believe it is the same one pictured on the left in the old photograph (Coffman's Department Store).
By now I was low on gas, so I detoured up to Oakland, MD in search of (i) gas, (ii) lunch, and (iii) a place to stay for the night. I did just fine on the first two, including lunch at the Oak-Mar Restaurant (see p. 106 of Neil Peart's book RoadShow), but I struck out entirely on (iii). It seems that, this close to Deep Creek Lake, every motel in Garrett County is booked up on weekends for weeks in advance.
After hustling back to my planned route, I soon ran into the first of my Unplanned Dead Ends. Garmin and Google, those evil twins, insist on showing certain back roads as continuing right along, even when in real life they stop all of a sudden!! At least it wasn't the middle of nowhere, since there were a couple of horses for company. The middle of nowhere was to come later...
Being forced to back-track, however, gave me the opportunity to get this picture, which I'd gone by on the first pass.
Now, however, it was on to the almost-musical Audley Riley Road, in search of the ghost towns of Schell and Wallman. As it turned out, the road to Schell was paved with good intentions ... and the worst sort of scabrous loose shale, complete with ruts, bumps, potholes, and the occasional kitchen sink to ride over. I jostled along this goat path (formally called Laurel Run Road) for roughly 3 miles, only to find the road closed off a half-mile short of Schell, where it turned into a path that even goats wouldn't take.
There was an attractive spring nearby. But just out of sight of the photo was a stern warning about the water not being fit to drink by man nor beast.
At least Laurel Run proved to be quite scenic and to show some signs of the former habitation.
I retraced my steps and pressed on to Wallman. Wallman, however, was down by the river, whereas Wallman Road was a good 500 feet up the side of the mountain! And it was made of more crushed rock, ditches, etc., complete with relatively steep uphill and downhill sections. A pretty decent challenge, actually--and well and truly in the middle of nowhere. I hadn't seen another car, bike, person, or even a friendly squirrel in quite some time!
Eventually I went by where Wallman must have once been, 500 feet below, and continued on toward the twin towns of Gormania, WV and Gorman, MD. After roughly 5 miles of the roughest terrain I'd ever been on--it seemed far longer--and only 2 miles short of Gorman, the @#$%&*! road again ended! In fairness, it actually continued, and I might have made it on foot, but there was no way I could wrestle a 500-lb GS up what was left of the trail. These gals and guys, however, were willing to give it a try:
In my case, I turned around and tottered the 5 miles back to civilization and detoured my way to Gorman and Gormania. During the steepest, most difficult section of my climb back up the trail, a large spider fell from a tree and landed right on my nose. As I was desperately trying to keep the GS moving upward, the spider was desperately trying to crawl up and away from this sweating, cursing face! As Neil likes to say, "Adventures suck when you're having them."
Eventually, against all odds, I arrived in Gorman, went west a little ways on route 50, and found a room at the Maryland Motel. I always like to take a picture out of the window of any place I stay. In this case, you can see the window screen (no air conditioning), the front of my GS parked outside, a Scenic Cadillac with 4 flat tires, and the friendly biker bar across the highway. As they say, any port in a storm!
I put my helmet down on the table and took a much-needed shower. When I next lifted the helmet, I discovered that it had left a major sweat ring on the table--that's how drenched it had been from my exertion on an exceedingly hot day. But it had been a very successful ride so far, with more to follow the next day. I slept soundly with many dreams of bounding over an endless series of rocky gullies and ducking under low-hanging branches...
Stay tuned for Day Two of Ghost Towns.
Rick F.
TedV
