Garrett County & Maryland Information: Garrett County

Book recounting the historic Sesquicentennial of Oakland, MD.

New pictures, new stories, and a new history of Mountain Lake Park, Maryland. This book provides thoroughly researched insights into the "Mountain Chautauqua". The focus is on the heyday of the "Park", from 1881 through 1921. With hundreds of photos and many first-hand accounts, the book recaptures the time when thousands of summer visitors flocked to the "Mountaintop".

Jacob Brown's observances of Garrett and Allegheny Counties, Maryland, the National Road, and other subjects related to the growth of western Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Bob Boal, President of the Garrett County Historical Society and Local Historian, asked Ed King to capture the stories and facts of the history of Deep Creek Lake before it slipped away forever. Ed King has spent the last three years interviewing and researching those listed in the acknowledgements to preserve the memories in print.

Famous Boats include many boats from antique wooden boats to canoes.
Dating back to 1925 when the lake was flooded to the present. Famous is in the mind of the Reader.

Meshach Browning spent decades as a professional hunter and trapper of bears, boars and deer in rural Maryland during the early 1800s - this is his story, in his own words. Born in modest circumstances, Browning grew up at a time when the United States as a nation was in its infancy, with much of the population living in rural areas. From his youth, the author vowed to be self-sufficient, leaving his home and first love to hone his abilities as a hunter. Returning with money gained from selling pelts and meat, it is then that Meshach contemplates hunting as a career. The equipment used by the author is much inferior to that of the modern day. Meshach's use of a musket - a gun whose reliability is demonstrated as poor in several instances - leads him to rely on his skills in close quarters combat. On multiple hunts, described with stunning vividness in these pages, Browning's ability to battle animals in melee saves his life. The dangers of his trade are balanced by its lucrativeness: bear meat and pelt for instance fetched high prices on the open market. Though his life's work is the primary subject, Meshach Browning shows a tender side when describing his first marriage; his loving wife Mary bore him several children. In later chapters, he proudly teaches his sons the craft which sustained their family for so many years.

Established in 1872, Garrett, Maryland's westernmost county, was the last county created in the state and is named for John Work Garrett, then president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The images presented here were selected with care from the author's collection of several thousand postcards. Featured are Garrett's numerous towns and communities; downtown business scenes; residential views; historic buildings, churches, railroad stations; and the great resort hotels. Also included are the county's many historic and natural landmarks, rustic scenes, the Deep Creek Lake area, and varied sites along the historic National Road. A special element is the inclusion of many of the personal messages sent on the back of the postcards.

Story of Friendsville, MD founder John Friend, who came to what is now Garrett County before the American Revolution.

From the unsolved to the unusual. From the historical to the hysterical. From the famous to the friendly. This is life in the Maryland mountains. Did you know that a Russian prince once worked as a priest in Cumberland? Have you heard the story about the German POW camp near Flintstone during WWII? Do you know about the mining wars that were fought to try and unionize the coal mines in the Georges Creek region? Do you know the story behind Cumberland's only lynching? Have you heard the story about the baseball game played between the Cumberland Colts and the New York Yankees? These are the stories of Allegany and Garrett counties in Maryland found in old newspapers, history books and other places. It's the stories of people who tamed the mountains, established cities, raised families and lived their lives. Journey back in time and look beyond the photos that so well document the region's history. This collection of 40 stories spans 220 years of life in Western Maryland. Originally published in the Cumberland Times-News and Allegany Magazine, some of these stories have been expanded as new information has been uncovered and new photos accompany some of the stories.

Another volume of the stories that show why life in Mountain Maryland is so interesting.
More than 200 years ago, a British general and his men left Fort Cumberland heading toward Fort Duquesne. They were massacred en route and somewhere before that point, their payroll in gold was buried. Treasure hunters have sought that lost treasure for centuries without success.

The election of President James Garfield was nearly upset because of a forgery conspiracy undertaken by a group of Democratic Party operatives in Cumberland.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, coal mining was a major industry in the mountains of Mineral, Allegany and Garrett counties. As those companies closed up and left the area, they left behind their company towns, which have now become ghost towns. Some of these small towns are no longer even accessible by car.

Historic book recounting Oakland, Maryland's history prior to its Centennial celebration.

History of Garrett County's Mt. Lake Park, which was established in 1881 as a mountain Chautauqua and summer resort made possible by the extension of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad into the mountains of western Maryland. It is the best preserved of the numerous resort communities built along the B&O on a high plateau known as “The Glades.”

Garrett County is known for its natural beauty, but hidden in the valleys, beneath the ground in coal mines, and in the attics of homes are true stories of crimes, cover-ups, legends, and life in Garrett County.* Learn about the grave for a general no one can identify.* Read about how the government dosed unknowing citizens with LSD at Deep Creek Lake.* Decipher clues to the hidden silver mine in the county.* Discover the photographic world of Leo J. Beachy.* Find out where Albert Einstein took a secret vacation.* And dozens more true stories.Secrets of Garrett County: Little-Known Stories & Hidden History of Maryland's Westernmost County tells stories of coal mining and railroads, crime and war, interesting people and unusual incidents. These are the types of stories that you won'd read about in history textbooks.

Strange and unusual stories that are based in Garrett County, Maryland.

A "fascinating slice of rarely considered American history" (Booklist)--the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison--whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life. In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America's roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is "a portrait of America's burgeoning love affair with the automobile" (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford's reputation, even as Edison's diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.