One of the first towns settled in northwestern Maryland, FREDERICK ,
at the junction of I-70 and I-270 an hour west of Baltimore, was laid
out in 1745 by German farmers lured from Pennsylvania by the promise of
cheap fertile land. It grew to become a main stopover on the route west
to the Ohio Valley, and the bulk of today's tidy town survives from the
early 1800s. A visitor center (daily 9am-5pm; tel 301/228-2888 or
1-800/999-3613) at 19 E Church St has walking tour maps of the town,
pointing out such places as the Schifferstadt House (Thurs-Sat 10am-4pm,
Sun noon-4pm; donation), just off US-15, a stonewalled farmhouse built
in 1753 and largely unaltered since.
According to a romantic poem popular with around 1900 schoolchildren,
ninety-five-year-old Barbara Fritchie defiantly waved the US flag while
Confederate soldiers marched past her home, the tiny Barbara Fritchie
House (April-Sept Mon & Thurs-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 1-4pm; $2) along Carroll
Creek on the west side of town. When Winston Churchill passed through,
he stopped at the house and recited the poem from memory.
Camp David , the mountain retreat used by US presidents since FDR, where
Jimmy Carter brought Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat together in 1978 to
sign the historic Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, is hidden
away in the mountains north of Frederick. Nearby Cunningham Falls State
Park and the Catoctin Mountain Park both hold seemingly endless hardwood
forests - great for fall color - in the midst of which are numerous
preserved remnants of early homesteaders. Pick up details on hiking and
camping at the main visitor center (daily 10am-4pm; tel 301/663-9388),
off Hwy-77 two miles west of US-15.
Besides being a nice detour off the highway, Frederick is a good base
for exploring places such as Antietam and Harpers Ferry in West
Virginia. There are motels along both I-70 and US-15, and in town the
Tyler Spite House , 112 W Church St (tel 301/831-4455; $130-160), is a
pleasant B&B in an elegant 1814 mansion. For a bite to eat , try the
soups and steaks at the Brown Pelican , 5 E Church St, or the burgers
and steamed crabs at Cactus Flats , three miles north off US-15.
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