The Maryland maps are 100% complete! Great Eastern Trail in Maryland is a cooperative project of Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, Green Ridge State Forest, Mid Atlantic Foot Trails Coalition (MAFTC), and the American Hiking Society. Link to the member organizations or click on the map below for detailed hiking maps and trail conditions.
Printable Trail Maps:
- Huntingdon, Bedford, Fulton Cos, PA; Washington County, MD
- Allegany County, MD; Morgan, Berkeley, Hampshire, Hardy Cos, WV; Frederick Co, VA
The Free State is so far the one out of nine states where GET hiker can walk on marked and maintained trail through the entire state, on not one, but two, routes!
The trail enters Maryland at the Town of Hancock, where the state is barely one mile wide – in a straight line, which the GET does not follow! After crossing the US 522 bridge and getting off into downtown on the completed and well maintained Tuscarora Trail, hiker’s choice is to turn east on a eight-mile run along the historic C&O Canal National Historical Park towpath – or west for a longer run on the towpath.
The 184.5-mile canal, built between 1828 and 1850, was the fifth longest in the United States. Preserved for historically sensitive non-motorized use through the vision of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and others, this precious greenspace stretching from the Nation’s capital to the heart of Appalachia features many historic structures, including 11 stone aqueducts, one of which is on the east loop. It is perhaps the gentlest segment of the entire GET and is also part of the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail, which when complete will link the tidewater of the Chesapeake Bay through Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The C&O towpath on both west and east loops of the GET also hosts America’s coast-to-coast American Discovery Trail .
If the hiker turns east, the trail leads along the C&O Towpath National Park, turning north at Licking Creek, milepost 116 on the C&O. The hiker follows the Tuscarora Trail into through Maryland for six miles, crossing into Pennsylvania at Yeakle Mill. (See PATC Map K.)
GET’s west loop moves along the C&O Towpath, presently to exit at Lock 58 (mile 144.5 on the C&O) on Long Pond Trail, just past the tiny hamlet of Little Orleans, into the beautifully mapped Green Ridge State Forest – to Pine Lick Trail, crossing surprisingly remote Appalachian ridges to reach Pennsylvania’s Mid State Trail.
A pending relocation in both MD and PA will use additional C&O towpath to the Paw Paw Tunnel opposite Paw Paw, W.Va. then head north to near Flintstone, Md., shortly meeting the famed Mason-Dixon Line.
Presently the GET is fully hikeable from the Allegheny Trail at I-64 exit 1, just east of the VA/WV border, northward through portions of VA, WV, all of MD, all of PA, to Maple Street in the Village of Addison, NY.
« South to Virginia/West Virginia || North to Pennsylvania »