Bygone Maryland Vacation Resorts

It’s hard to believe now, but in the late 19th century Baltimoreans anxious to escape the blinding heat and insufferable humidity of the city took their vacation respite in Ellicott City, Catonsville, Ruxton, Riderwood, Lutherville, Parkton or Bentley Springs.

To think of those places as “resorts” today would certainly be laughable, but in those days, they were just that because they were in the “country” where it was cooler than trying to survive in hot rowhouses and endure city sidewalks of the city which sits in a bowl at sea level.

It’s almost comical to think  the Mencken family of 1524 Hollins St. in Southwest Baltimore, would rent a Victorian house (it’s still there, by the way) high above a hill above a landscaping company overlooking today’s Northern Parkway.

Mencken in his book, “Happy Days,” recalls summers there in the 1880s when he and his siblings watched trains on the nearby Pennsylvania Railroad and waded and fished in the Jones Falls.

He writes about being sprawled on the porch on a summer’s evening looking northward watching thunderstorms and lightning as they made their way through southern Pennsylvania rumbling in the distance.

But back in a slower paced time before the rise of such popular resorts as Ocean City, Atlantic City, Newport or those in New England, and back before the automobile killed off summer trains, people of means from Baltimore or Washington stepped aboard the steamcars of the Baltimore  & Ohio Railroad to Deer Park in Garrett County, or the Western Maryland Railway which conveyed them in comfort to its Blue Mountain House near Penn Mar, high in the cool mountains, where Wallis Warfield Simpson, the future Duchess of Windsor, made her debut.

 The B & O’s famed Deer Park Hotel drew the bon-ton not only from Baltimore and Washington, but New York and Philadelphia to what railroad publicists quickly deemed the “Summer Capital” of the United States.

Deer Park was the brainchild of B & O president John W. Garrett who envisioned the top of the Alleghenies, five hours from Washington on the mainline of his railroad, as the “Switzerland of America.”

Sitting 2,500 feet above sea level on 600 wooded acres, the site known as the “Glades” became the fulfillment of Garrett’s vision.

Deer Park was built in 1879 and rose three stories high in the architectural style  of a grand Swiss Alpine hotel, which was ringed with wide covered white painted porches with pale yellow trim. The roof was finished in a gray-red- peach bottom slate.

When it came to the interior, no amenity or expense was overlooked.There were electric lights , telephones, comfortable private bathrooms  and a formal ballroom for social events.

The expansive grounds offered numerous recreational possibilities from golf, tennis, cricket and croquet, and for the non-athletic, pavilions for card playing were available.

Passenger trains depositing hotel guests at Deer Park were met by an open barouche, a six-horse tally-ho.

From its beginning, Deer Park became a destination for presidents. President Grant beat the heat there in 1883, as did President Harrison. President Cleveland spent his honeymoon there in 1886 and preferred to carry his own baggage to and from the station. He returned often to relax and fish.

But the coming of the automobile sounded the death knell for such grand railroad resorts as vacationers were able to go elsewhere, and Deer Park began to lose its social luster and exclusivity.

In 1924, the B & O sold the hotel, and it stood empty for the next two decades before being demolished in 1945.

But a small legacy of the hotel lingered on. The B & O served Deer Park spring water aboard its dining and club cars until the coming of Amtrak in 1971 when B & O trains were not included in the new company.

The spring, located on a ridge along Backbone Mountain where the pristine waters of Boiling Spring bubble up through layers of white sand.

Hydrologists explained that the spring was fed by a vast underground aquifer that extended some 40 miles beneath Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia.

In 1970, Nestle purchased the spring and 850 surrounding acres from the B & O and continued to bottle the spring water until 2001, when Perrier Group of America, a division of a Swiss conglomerate Nestle, announced it was turning off the spigot and shipping bottling elsewhere.

While still available in name only in stores, Deer Park spring water is not drawn from its namesake but elsewhere these days.

While the spring continues to flow and trains pass where the old hotel once stood, one thing is certain, no passenger asks for a ticket to Deer Park any longer.