Inspired by reading about the lives of the great African explorers, I once tracked the whole length of the Nile from the Mediterranean Sea to its source at Lake Tana in the Gish Abay region of the Ethiopian Highlands. Dr. Livingstone had a dreadful time slogging through all that jungle. Me, I just opened Google Earth on my laptop and traced it with my mouse. It was easy. I don’t know why the good doctor did it the hard way. Poor timing on his part, I presume.
I like to do the same thing with rivers and streams here in Maryland. One such exploration led me to Little Pipe Creek in Carroll County. Google Earth is a wonderful app. I get a kick out of typing in a destination in the menu bar and watching the cosmic zoom-in from outer space to the spot I’ve selected. In this case, it was the town of Union Bridge. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources sends out an alert when volunteers have stocked local waterways with trout, and Little Pipe Creek was on the list this past week.
I’d never heard of the place, so I zoomed in on Little Pipe Creek Park in Union Bridge and followed the stream as it wound around the countryside. Little Pipe Creek flows into Big Pipe Creek to become Double Pipe Creek before it joins the Monocacy River about 16 miles north of Frederick, Maryland.
According to Hammil Kenny’s book, “Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning,” the name came from the red clay pipes used by Native American tribes when they gathered near what is now Union Bridge. Union Bridge used to be called “Buttersburg” because of its renowned dairy products, but around 1810 it was named Union Bridge for the span across the creek that united the local settlements on opposite side.
So, the site rang a bunch of bells in my curiosity belfry: a place on a waterway with an interesting name, a 90-minute drive of home, and the bonus of a chance to catch a freshly stocked fish. I just had to check it out. On one of those brilliantly sunny days this past week, I opened up the tailgate of my car and Millie the wonder retriever hopped in the back, ready for adventure.
The drive through Carroll County was quite pleasant, with its rolling farmland and meadows covered in wildflowers. In just these past couple weeks, the leaves on the trees have popped out and the red buds have become covered with purple-pink dots. The dogwoods are suddenly in full bloom, while the leaves on the cherry trees are beginning to push through the pink blossoms.
We made it to the little town of Union Bridge, with its turreted Victorian homes and a museum in the old railroad station, and found the park on the far side of town. It’s on a 40-acre floodplain of a stream that had been channelized – in other words, straightened out – to act like a ditch to drain nearby pastureland.
Over time, stormwater surging down the channel caused severe erosion, which made the stream an ecological disaster area. Now, the stream has been restored, and while it looked a little turbid owing to recent heavy rains, the shorelines looked stable and had been planted with native trees and shrubs.
There’s a pedestrian bridge that spans the creek and leads to a half-mile of paved trail that loops around the site, but the most charming walk is the path mowed into the grasses along the edge of the creek.
There were a few fishermen along the banks and a couple of women with a baby carriage and a fluffy white dog strolling along the paved trail. Millie and I walked along the creek until I found a spot that seemed ideal for casting a fly. On the first back-cast, Millie decided she couldn’t resist taking a swim and jumped into the water. That’s one of the perils when you take your dog along on a fishing trip. Despite the distraction, I managed to drop the fly in a ripple behind a rock on the far bank, just where I thought a fish might like to lurk and sure enough, I got a bite and hauled in a nice little rainbow. Millie was fascinated. I let her take a good sniff before I gave the fish a grateful kiss and settled it back into the water.
We walked on to where the stream flowed underneath a railroad trestle. There we found a delightful porch swing suspended from a metal rail. It was ideal for taking a rest and watching the current flow by. The trail turned to follow the railroad track and loop around the woods, back to the footbridge. A spur of the trail sidles off toward town.
It was the perfect place for a perfect day. We topped it off with a stop at the Buttersburg Inn, and while Millie sat in the shade leashed to a bench on the sidewalk with a cool bowl of water, I went in and had a sandwich and a refreshing glass of iced tea. I’ll have to come back when the railroad museum is open. An interpretive panel outside the museum noted that Union troops passed through on their way to and from the Battle of Gettysburg.
Speaking of interesting place names, there’s a town downstream of here called “Detour.” Again, according to “The Place Names of Maryland” book, the town was originally called Double Pipe Creek when the first post office opened there in 1825. When the Western Maryland Railroad came through, the name was too long to fit on the train’s timetables. They chose Detour, according to the book, “perhaps because the creek and the new railroad detoured around the high places nearby.” Local lore has it that the residing bishop suggested the name “after seeing so many detour signs in his travels on the roads of the Middle West.”
The author also notes that Little Pipe Creek makes a sharp curve or detour right about that spot. I know, I saw it while exploring the place on Google Earth.
Little Pipe Creek Park
- 4801 Green Valley Rd.
- Union Bridge, MD 21791
- Limited parking available on the side of the road across from the Dollar General.
- Open dawn to dusk.
- No admission fee.
- No facilities on site.
- Polite dogs on leashes are welcome.