Welcome back to our page! Our website team is still working diligently to get our pages up and running so we apologize for any glitches. Browsing through our calendar, you will note achange on the upcoming Tidelock project. The new date is October 31st, 9am-12, at MilePost 0.
Upcoming Events:
On Friday September 11th, 2009, a group of volunteers from the Brickman organization will be sprucing up our Mule Barn area at Great Falls Tavern. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal maintains a stable of six to eight mules for its interpretive canal boat operations. The mules are a great favorite of park visitors. The National Park Service ensures the year-round good health and safety of the mules that pull The Georgetown and the Charles Fenton Mercer. The C&O Canal stable of mules, Dolly, Ida, Lil, Ada, Molly and Nell, have life much easier than the mules of yesteryear: our mules pull at most a twenty-eight ton boat, two hours per day, four days a week, whereas their predecessors would pull a 140-ton boat eight hours a day, seven days a week.
Thus our present day mules, fed and loved by staff and visitors alike, now help to ensure the success of the re-creation of the colorful canal era in the United States. Our goal is to lay down some crushed stone, prune vegetation away from the barn, mend and cut back vegetation from the fences, and paint two sides of the barn. Our mules appreciate the attention! Check out some photos at http://www.nps.gov/choh/planyourvisit/picturesofthemules.htm.
Another upcoming event is our Annual Recognition Dinners on September 16th at Carderock Pavillon and September 17th at Ferry Hill Plantation. Invitations have been sent and responses are flooding in! We are near capacity at Carderock with close to 100 VIPs and staff planning to attend in addition to more than 50 at Ferry Hill. Awards for top volunteers and staff throughout all districts of the park will be presented and all volunteers who have donated their time and support will be recognized. We are expecting fun evenings with great food and the best of company. Contact your group leader for more information…last person who RSVPs is assigned to clean-up duty so don’t wait!
Two more events are scheduled for September 19th at Fletcher’s Cove Boathouse where groups will be removing trash and debris, and September 26th, National Public Lands Day, Adopt-A-Crag at Carderock where volunteers will be improving trails and general cleaning. See our calendar for more information.
On September 27th, PBS will be premiering America’s Best Idea, a series on the National Parks. Filmmaker Ken Burns and his longtime colleague Dayton Duncan take us on a behind the scenes tour of their new PBS series, THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA. The team explains why they chose The Parks as their subject, as well as describing their five-year journey through research, scripting, filming and editing the series. http://video.pbs.org/video/1132712651 Watch a clip now!
Did you Know?
The Paw Paw Tunnel is 3,118 feet long and is lined with over six million bricks. The 3/4 mile long tunnel saved the canal builders almost six miles of construction along the Paw Paw bends of the Potomac River. It took twelve years to build and was only wide enough for single lane traffic.
Did You Know?
There are several gold mines in the Great Falls area. The largest of these is the Maryland Mine located at the intersection of Falls Road and MacArthur Boulevard near Potomac, Maryland. Gold was first discovered here by a Union soldier from Pennsylvania during the Civil War.
Finally, please remember our park is a trash-free park. There are no trash receptacles provided. Please leave no trace and take your trash with you.