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The Paw Paw segment is the last sixty miles of the towpath, from Hancock to the canal terminus at Cumberland. It is the remotest and highest part of the canal, running through ridge and valley country with Green Ridge State Forest on one side and the Potomac on the other. The Paw Paw Tunnel is the centerpiece, a 3,118 foot bore with the towpath running through it. Towns are few: Little Orleans, Paw Paw and Oldtown are the only services between Hancock and Cumberland. At Cumberland the Great Allegheny Passage continues west. The Antietam segment runs east from Hancock.
C & O Canal Towpath: Paw Paw
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the C & O Canal Towpath: Paw Paw has about 121 to 161 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, birding, running, biking, and walking, with April, May, and October the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the C & O Canal Towpath: Paw Paw!
In half of past years, color along the C & O Canal Towpath: Paw Paw peaks October 20 to 29, typically around October 25. The trail has 55% deciduous coverage, with the majority being chestnut oak, white oak, red maple, scarlet oak, and yellow-poplar.
George Washington founded the Potowmack Company in 1785 to make the Potomac navigable. It built five skirting canals around the worst falls, good for floating down but not for hauling up. Its holdings passed to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company in 1824. President John Quincy Adams turned the first spadeful on July 4, 1828. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad broke ground the same day, and the two fought in court over the narrow riverbank between Point of Rocks and Harpers Ferry before agreeing to share it. The canal reached Cumberland on October 10, 1850, and five boats brought down 491 tons of coal that first day. The railroad had beaten it there by eight years, so the canal stopped at Cumberland and never crossed the Alleghenies. Mules towed the boats, often driven by children, and seventy-four lift locks raised them 605 feet above tidewater. An 1889 flood forced the company into receivership, and the railroad came to control it through its bonds. The March 1924 flood ended navigation. The United States acquired the canal in 1938. Justice William O. Douglas walked the whole towpath in March 1954 to stop a proposed parkway, and Congress made it a National Historical Park on January 8, 1971. This segment climbs from Hancock into ridge and valley country to the Cumberland terminus. Its centerpiece is the Paw Paw Tunnel, begun in 1836 on a two year estimate and opened fourteen years later, a bore cut to avoid six miles of river bends.
Great Allegheny Passage: Big SavageWestern Maryland Rail TrailTunnel Hill TrailPotomac Heritage National Scenic Trail
