Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland—Missing Persons in Garrett County (Part II)

Last July, Jane and I went to the Garrett County (MD) Fairgrounds overlooking Deep Creek Lake for the Tristate Relief Sale, an auction sponsored by local Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren churches to benefit the work of the Mennonite Central Committee. They sell all kinds of things, including—inevitably—shoofly pie. Jane was interested in the quilts. I had intended to do some fishing, but it was raining off and on, and, since I was feeling less waterproof than usual, I had given up on fishing for the day.

Deep Creek Lake (Garrett County, MD).
The Garrett County Fairgrounds are near the head of
the lake, which is at the top left corner of the photo.

Some of the quilts were Amish; we managed to escape with just one.

Amish quilt purchased at Tristate Relief Sale, July 2014
McHenry, MD

Since fishing was out for the day, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the Garrett County Historical Museum, hard by the restored B&O railroad station in Oakland, which is just a few miles south of Deep Creek Lake. I say "revisit" because I had stopped in several years ago, had enjoyed myself, and had long wanted to take Jane to see it.

The museum is divided up into a number of rooms, with each room containing artifacts and memorabilia from a particular facet of Garrett County's history. There is a room for schools, for arts and recreation, for the early, cabin-dwelling settlers, for the railroad, and finally, for the grand hotels that Oakland very quickly became noted for after the Civil War. This is the room that caught my attention this trip.

B&O President John W. Garrett found the landscape and climate around Oakland so congenial (query to self: did Garrett ever see what winter was like in Oakland?), that he wanted to build a resort hotel there. The idea was that the B&O would make money transporting people to the resort, make money from their stay at the resort, and then make money transporting them home again.

The B&O purchased land in Deer Park a few miles east of Oakland in 1869. The first section of the Deer Park Hotel opened for business on July 4, 1873.

Business was good: by the mid-1880s, the Deer Park Hotel had expand to nearly double its original size. With 300 guest rooms, the Hotel featured an 18 hole golf course, four bowling alleys, two swimming pools, clay tennis courts, a music pavilion and a billiard room. Garrett liked the area so much that he built a summer cottage for himself and his family near the Hotel.

Deer Park Hotel, Deer Park (Garrett County) MD.

And the profit-making battle in Garrett County was joined: the Oakland Hotel was a second B&O hotel for shorter-term stays built right across the Youghiogheny River from the Oakland railroad station; another group built the Loch Lynn Heights Hotel, which included a casino with card rooms, a ballroom, and a heated swimming pool. Other, smaller hotels and boarding houses appeared.

Oakland Hotel, Oakland, MD
Photo by Allen C. Browne
Courtesy of HMdb.org

The largest single venture was a Chautauqua-style meeting ground built by the Methodists at Mountain Lake Park, just between the town of Oakland and the Deer Park Hotel. It included a conference center, cabins, and the Bashford amphitheater with a seating capacity of almost 5,000. Each summer there was a month of cultural and religious activities. Speakers included William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan, Samuel Gompers, Mark Twain, and Billy Sunday. Mountain Lake was, however, run by strict Methodist rules, giving rise to the saying "If you want to sin, go to Loch Lynn. For Jesus' sake, go to Mountain Lake!"

These wonderful old hotels are gone now. The Hotel Room at the Historical Museum had menus and silver and china and photos from the Deer Park and Oakland Hotels, and photos of the guests and some of the staff. But something kept nagging at me while I was there. There was something missing, and I didn't realize what it was until we had returned home.


Sources: The information about Mountain Lake Park came from the National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Application Form and from Albert L. Feldstein's Garrett County (MD) (Postcard History Series) (Arcadia: 2006), p. 46.