Garrett County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Garrett County

Three thousand three hundred and sixty feet of elevation at Backbone Mountain — the highest peak in Maryland — means that the entire state's elevation profile above 3,000 ft fits inside a single Allegheny Front ridge inside Garrett County, and every Marylander who ever 'climbed the highest point in the state' did it here on a 1.5-mile out-and-back boot path off US-219 just south of the West Virginia line. The summit cairn holds the painted register coffee can where successful hikers sign in. Garrett County is the only Maryland county west of the Allegheny Front and the only county whose drainage flows entirely west into the Mississippi Basin (via the Youghiogheny River) rather than east into the Chesapeake Bay — a continental-divide distinction that makes the county geographically and culturally more Appalachian than coastal-Maryland. The 649-sq-mi county sits at the western tip of the Maryland panhandle, completely west of Sideling Hill's anticline cut on I-68.

Deep Creek Lake at 3,900 surface acres is the largest freshwater lake in Maryland (a privately-developed 1925 hydroelectric reservoir later partially-transferred to Maryland DNR as Deep Creek Lake State Park) and the only inland lake with a public-launch state park — Wisp Resort on Marsh Mountain overlooking the lake is Maryland's only commercial alpine ski area, with the largest vertical drop in any Maryland or DC-region ski resort at 700 ft and the only Olympic-grade whitewater course in the state at the adjacent Adventuresports Center International (the venue for the 2014 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships and the only chlorinated whitewater course in the US). Deep Creek Lake State Park accepts rigs to 40 ft with electric hookups on 112 sites — the only Maryland state-park RV-friendly base west of the Allegheny Front. Swallow Falls State Park 9 miles north holds Muddy Creek Falls (Maryland's tallest free-falling waterfall at 53 ft) and accepts rigs to 35 ft on 65 sites. New Germany State Park and Big Run State Park accept rigs to 30 ft. Garrett State Forest permits 14-day dispersed at signed sites with rigs to 25 ft. Oakland (population 1,853, the county seat) anchors the county's only full-service grocery, propane, and diesel infrastructure. The Western Maryland Scenic Railroad's restored Cumberland-to-Frostburg run terminates 30 miles east in Allegany County.