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The Western Maryland Rail Trail is a paved, rail-grade path along the Potomac River in Washington and Allegany counties. It runs about 28 miles from Big Pool Trailhead, half a mile west of Fort Frederick State Park, through Hancock to Little Orleans, with the C&O Canal towpath beside it the whole way. East of Hancock the corridor crosses rolling farmland and passes the Licking Creek and Tonoloway Creek aqueducts. West of Hancock it enters wooded, hillier country with rock cuts, the Round Top Cement Mill ruins, Dam 6, and the old canal settlement of Pearre. Near Little Orleans a two mile towpath bypass skirts the closed Indigo Tunnel. Hancock, at the midpoint, is the only town on the route.
Western Maryland Rail Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Western Maryland Rail Trail has about 119 to 164 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 Western Maryland Rail Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Western Maryland Rail Trail peaks October 21 to 29, typically around October 25. The trail has 54% deciduous coverage, with the majority being white oak, chestnut oak, red maple, yellow-poplar, and scarlet oak.
The Western Maryland Railway pushed its Cumberland Extension through this valley in 1904 and opened it in 1906. Before that, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal had carried the traffic along the Potomac here, and the towpath still runs beside the trail for its whole length. Canal boats wintered at Pollypond, west of Hancock. The railroad squeezed its line between the canal and the hillside, boring five tunnels and building 23 bridges between Hagerstown and Cumberland. Indigo Tunnel, near Little Orleans, was the longest on the system. The Chessie System absorbed the Western Maryland and abandoned this line in 1975, keeping the parallel Baltimore and Ohio route across the river instead. The stretch inside the C&O Canal park reverted to the National Park Service in 1980. The rails east of Tonoloway came up in December 1988. In August 1990 the Maryland Department of Natural Resources bought the 20 mile corridor from CSX with Program Open Space money. The first ten miles, from Big Pool to Hancock, opened in 1998. A second section from Hancock to Pollypond opened on June 10, 2002. A short third phase reached Pearre in 2005. The final piece, to Little Orleans, waited on a 2010 agreement to bypass Indigo Tunnel and protect its bats, and opened in 2019. The state repaved most of the trail in 2024.
C&O Canal Towpath
plus interpretive signage along the trail
