Maryland Daily Photo

I broke with the tradition of not putting up posts on holidays so that I could bring you this giant flag for the Fourth of July. 

It is, of course, located over the Burtonsville auto park, and as visible for a good mile or maybe more south. 

Why not keep with a mini theme here and dust off a picture I took in April.  This is the Montgomery County flag.   The ornamentation of the flag has to do with General Richard Montgomery and is taken from the Montgomery family coat of arms.  

Since it’s almost independence day, I figured this would be a good chance to use this picture of flags in front of a group of ominous storm clouds.   You will note the Maryland Flag and the Washington County flag flying to either side.

Congratulations to Bryan for correctly guessing yesterday’s steeple location.   I was considering finishing out the week with a number of different, “guess the steeple” posts, but I had second thoughts.

Today’s post is going of in a completely different direction, far north-west of College Park.  This is Cunningham Falls state park, a 5,000 acre park situated in the Catoctin mountains.   While the Catoctin National Park to the north of Cunningham Falls gets much of the fame and the spotlight as it is the home of Camp David, is neighbor offers some excellent sites as well as a glimpse into the area’s past.  You can hike to the falls themselves, climb to the top of the mountain range, or visit the only remaining iron furnace in the area.   Obviously, mdp has done few of these things.   So what we have to offer you is this appealing and welcoming sign. 

Can you guess where this relatively well known steeple is located?

If you’ve ever lookd underneath the Key Bridge, you’ve likely seen Fort Carroll.    This artificial island was actually built in 1848 to add a defensive barrier to Baltimore ahead of Fort McHenry.   The concrete barriers you see were modern additions (ca 1900)   It has been abandoned for nearly 90 years now and its strictly off limits.

These lanterns hang above the Power Plant Live area of Baltimore.  I’ll admit that I dug this picture out of the archives of last summer, when I had to photograph things from my old parking lot.

I love this picture of the shot tower in Baltimore becasue those clouds make it look like some sort of video game backdrop.  

Of course the tower itself was designed for a very real purpose: the manufacturing of ammunition.   To do that in 1828, you climbed to the top of the tower and dropped molten lead though a sieve, to create small pellets which would cool and take a smooth round shape on their way down to the bottom of the tower.  

The tower, at the time called the Phoenix Shot Tower, was the tallest building in the country, and remained so for many decades.    Believe it or not, in the late 1800’s somebody found a better way to make small round pellets of lead.  However, the tower remains for us to enjoy despite its obsolescence.   For that we can thank a group of concerned citizens, who in 1924 raised enough money to buy the tower and give it to the city, thereby preventing its demolition.  

You might have heard in the news the other day about the two people who were killed in the street races on I-70.   Well, here’s where it happened, and you can see why they choose this place.  This is the absolute easternmost point ot I-70.  As we talked about during the post about the stack, the interstate was supposed to continue past this point into Baltimore proper.  

Community action, which you can read about here, blocked the highway in the midst of its construction, partially in order to save Leakin and Gwynns Falls Parks.  (Just a side note if you’ve read the book Homicide, David Simon essentially portrays those two parks as dumping grounds for dead bodies)  The road then stops at the point where this  picture was taken.   

Now, from the stack to this point, there is a two mile stretch of interstate quality roadway that few people ever use.  At night, when the make-shift park and ride visible in this picture is not needed for commuters, you can see how this stretch of road would appeal to street racers.

Yesterday, when I was spending some time with my parents for Father’s day, they had informed me that they recently drove past the Glyndon post office as featured in a previous MDP post.  They knew it was an old train station, but didn’t believe there were still tracks there.  Fortunately MDP had another angle of view, from behind the station.  

As for this car, which is found behind the Glyndon post office, it is from the Maryland Midland Railroad, a formerly independent short line ralroad that serves a cleint base between Baltimore county and Frederick County and Washington County.  It was recently purchased by the Genesee and Wyonming railroad, which is effectively a consolidation of short lines from across the country.