NORTH POINT STATE PARK

North Point State Park is located just north of Baltimore via the Key Bridge ($4 each way).  After crossing Baltimore Harbor you will encounter an amazing sight. On the east side of the Patapsco River where the historic Bethlehem Steel and Sparrows Point steel mills once stood with their surreal and slightly forbidding black smelting ovens that produced vast quantities of steel for generations, is now a modern mega-distribution site called Tradepoint Atlantic, employing thousands of workers.  Basically, a lot of what arrives by ship into Baltimore these days ends up getting processed and then moved by truck from this new commercial port of entry along Bethlehem Boulevard. Acres and acres of new cars sit waiting to be shipped to car dealerships all over the east coast. The complex stretches as far as the eye can see with huge, one-to-four story big box warehouses bearing hotshot names like Under Armour, FedEx, Amazon Fulfillment Center, Access World, Alcoa World, Atlantic Forest Product Warehouse, and Harley Davidson.  And from the looks of it, there’s way more coming.

You often hear about how the Baltimore area doesn’t have its act together, but in this case they turned a contaminated industrial dead zone into a vibrant money machine in about a year.  Presto-changeo! Out with the old and in with the new.  

After passing through the small, blue collar town of Edgemere, you will come to North Point State Park, located on the Patapsco River Neck Peninsula.  Its rich alluvial farmland at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay has made it a popular place to live, going back 9,000 years to the Indians who lived along its shores.

It was also the site where the War of 1812 miraculously turned against the British.  We are all familiar with the shelling of Fort McHenry and a desperate Francis Scott Key penning the “Star Spangled Banner” in the dawn’s early light.  But what gets lost in the rockets red glare is the fact that on September 12,1814, as part of the siege of Baltimore, British General Robert Ross was leading his troops on an end run flanking maneuver to capture and burn Baltimore when he was killed by a sniper hiding in the second floor of a farmhouse called Todd’s Inheritance, and this so confused and demoralized the British forces that they ended up ultimately abandoning their attack on Charm City.  This was the turning point of the war which up until then had seen the British burn Washington and win every battle along the way.

And that’s not all.  From 1906-1947, North Point was the home of the sprawling Bay Shore Amusement Park, built by the United Railways and Electric Company of Baltimore.  A trolley/streetcar line and large steamboats delivered the citizens of Baltimore to the park where they could enjoy a day of leisure along the Bay and dine luxuriously on white table cloths, eating crab cake and fried chicken full course meals for 75 cents.

In 1947, Bethlehem Steel purchased the land and knocked down the amusement park.  And in 1987, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) purchased the land from Bethlehem Steel for five million dollars and created what was originally called Black Marsh State Park.

So, if you want to walk back through Maryland history, North Point State Park is a good place to start.

My buddy Jimmy and I started our 5-mile loop hike on the Black Marsh Trail (White) which begins in the big parking lot on the left just after the entrance station.

White egrets perched in the dead trees of the expansive marsh as green, little blue, and great blue herons fished in the shallows.  Eastern Peewees were singing “Pee-Wee!” non-stop (they have been in every state park we have visited over the summer), and woodpeckers hungrily banged their heads against trees.  Black swallowtail butterflies fluttered daintily around the dirt path, looking for nectar while bald eagles sat majestically in the solitary sentinel trees throughout the swampy creek that was teeming with water snakes and big, bass drum frogs.

We turned left on the Observation Trail (Blue) along the spongy wet edge of the marsh. One lone photographer snapping bird shots was the only person we would see for the next few hours.

Large tulip poplars and oaks ended at a raised wooden observation deck surrounded by phragmites wetlands grass that completely blocked the marshy view. There is much debate these days as to whether “phrag“, as it is often referred to, is an invasive or whether it predates European settlement. Whatever the case, it sure loves the shorelines of the Chesapeake Bay.

Black Marsh totally reminded me of the Florida Everglades, but without the swarming mosquitoes.

We retraced our steps to the Black Marsh Trail and after a few hundred feet took the Muskrat Trail (Yellow) where we were serenaded by the prehistoric screams of herons and snowy egrets accompanied by a crazy cicada chorus from the treetops. This short path ended at another marsh where there was probably another nice view of the water, but, once again, all we could see was a wall of twelve-feet-tall phragmites. 

We then took the Holly Trail (Red) for a quarter mile before turning left on the Powerhouse Trail spur that ended at a driftwood trash pile on the Bay. From here on, the trails would parallel the park’s bay front shoreline, heading south.

We walked back the way we had come on the Powerhouse Trail for a quarter-mile and then took the Spur Trail (Green) to a lovely beach facing Tolchester on the upper Eastern Shore, just north of the forgotten town of Gratitude and up and coming Rock Hall where the Tolchester Amusement Park — Bay Shore’s sister park across the Bay — used to stand in the early 1900s. 

After lounging on a bleached driftwood log for about an hour, just chatting and staring at the silvery Bay as the occasional tanker made it’s way north to Delaware Bay via the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, we resumed our hike, following the Powerhouse Trail past the ruins of the huge, vine draped and graffiti-covered powerhouse.

After a half-mile or so we rejoined the Black Marsh Trail with several short spurs branching off to the left and leading to small secluded beaches.  There were shiny white fish scales on the path where the local eagles had recently dined.

The one thing we didn’t see was deer.  The park has a very aggressive managed deer hunt — mostly bow hunters — that has kept the deer population in check.

We soon took a left on the Ferry Grove Trail (Blue) to the crumbling concrete ferry boat dock which offered a stellar, wide-angle view up and down the Bay. This was where park visitors landed by boat when the amusement park was in full swing. Time has not been kind to the structure. Jimmy and I sat on the shattered stone pier and tried to imagine hordes of Baltimorons gaily disembarking for a day at the beach way back in the day. It must have once been a happening spot indeed.

A few minutes later we took a left on the Old Oak Trail (Turquoise) past the ruins of water cisterns and brick foundations associated with the Bay Shore Amusement Park. 

We then experienced one of the unique aspects of Maryland’s natural landscape.  The elevation dropped a few feet and suddenly we went from poplars and pine trees to nothing but hollies — some of the biggest I have ever seen — along with a  2-foot diameter persimmon tree. And that’s pretty big for that species.

After about a mile we turned right on the Beaver Pond Trail (Red) which led us back to the entrance road.  

We turned left and walked up the asphalt road to the main beach where we encountered people for the first time since starting our hike about three hours before.  Most of our state parks are empty and used primarily by people of color. In fact, many of the informational signs are in English and Spanish.

The area around the beach at North Point is where most people go.  And there are plenty of interesting amenities scattered around the beach, like the Takos Visitor Center, resembling the historic dining lodge, and a lovely ornamental fountain from the park’s heyday as an amusement park; several picnic areas adorned with the original United Railways and Electric Company trolley station, lovingly restored by DNR staff and now functioning as an outdoor pavilion; and a brand new stone fishing jetty, jutting a thousand feet out into the Bay.

After checking out the local fishermen at the end of the jetty who were catching white perch and spot, Jimmy and I decided to head back to our car, following the main entrance road.  There was an afternoon storm rolling in and we were tired. But while we had seen most of the main attractions in the park, we had only walked about half the trails, and had not visited Todd’s Inheritance where the War of 1812 went south for the British.

On the mile-long walk back to the car, we passed lush soybean fields which the Maryland Department of Natural Resources rents to local farmers, carrying on the agricultural traditions of the North Point peninsula.  “Want to see something cool?” I asked my hiking partner.

“Sure,” replied Jimmy with a tired smile.

We walked out into the field, being careful not to step on the dark green soybean plants that were up to our knees, and stopped when we came to a low lying open area where sediment had collected.  I looked around the sandy spot for a few minutes until I spotted what I was looking for and I pointed at a dark piece of black stone about the size of a silver dollar.  

“What is it?” asked Jimmy.

“Don’t touch it,” I warned, “this is technically an archaeological site.  And that’s a piece of basalt — volcanic rock — that was mined in western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. This is the coastal plain and you would have to go hundreds of miles to the west before you’d find obsidian like that. The Indians who lived on this peninsula thousands of years ago traded for it, so they could make spear points. This shows that not only were Indians inhabiting this area long ago, but that they had also established a pretty extensive trading network.”

Jimmy looked at the stone in wonder.  “This park is amazing!” he exclaimed.

“They all are, my friend.  People just have to take the time to check them out.”

• http://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/Pages/central/northpoint.aspx