Tuckahoe State Park, Maryland: Paddling a Creek Steamboats Once Climbed

In the 1800s, steamboats regularly left the Chesapeake Bay, steamed up the Choptank River and wound farther up Tuckahoe Creek to the village of Hillsboro, Maryland, where the creek grew narrow and shallow. Since then, as in many Bay tributaries, erosion has laid sediment along the creek bed and made it shallower still — steamboats could not make that trip today.

Yet the stretch above Hillsboro, once called unnavigable, is now the creek's most popular: the heart of Tuckahoe State Park on Maryland's Eastern Shore, with quiet paddling, good fishing and plenty of wildlife.

A park with many uses

• Trails: more than 15 miles of wooded trail for riders, hikers and mountain bikers.
• Hunting: turkeys in spring, deer and waterfowl in fall.
• Camping: cabins, tent sites and RV sites, plus youth group camping and a ropes challenge course for team-building and family days.

But the water is the main attraction.

The creek

Tuckahoe Creek rises in headwater streams just over the Delaware line. It is named for the arrow arum, a sturdy wetland plant with arrow-shaped leaves commonly called "tuckahoe," which grows there in abundance. For about eight miles of its run toward the Bay, the creek flows through the middle of the park between wetlands. In the upper reach, wooded wetlands form a maze of channels among mature trees, still deep enough to paddle.

The land has changed little over the centuries. Evidence of American Indians has been found in the park, and a gristmill once stood on the creek — the origin of the name of the main access road, Crouse's Mill Road. Frederick Douglass, famed for escaping slavery and for his fearless defense of human rights, was born in a log cabin along Tuckahoe Creek.

The lake that almost was

The park was created for its water, not its history. Maryland began buying land along the creek in the 1960s, planning to dam it and make a lake of about 300 acres. Two things stopped the plan:

• Geology. The lake would have depended mostly on seepage, which could not reliably fill it, and the sluggish water would have bred algae in the shallows.
• A giant tree. Planners found an enormous overcup oak — a National Champion Tree, the largest of its kind in the continental United States. It had grown so big because it stood in the marsh, where people left it alone.

Today Tuckahoe Lake officially covers 60 acres, but only 20 are open water; the rest is a watery tangle of trees and scrub, thick with birds and other wildlife.

Paddling routes

The lake is where most paddlers and boaters start. Anglers in electric-motor boats share its launch with canoes and kayaks, and paddlers can go beyond it:

• Mason Branch Water Trail — upstream from the lake, two miles through wooded wetlands toward the campground. This is the most popular route.
• Tuckahoe Creek Water Trail — from a launch by a small bridge just below the dam, 5.2 miles downstream toward town. It's best in spring and fall, when water is higher.

The National Audubon Society lists the park as an Important Bird Area, especially for neotropical migrants such as the prothonotary warbler.

Sources

• National Park Service, Chesapeake Bay: "Navigating Tuckahoe State Park," an abridged version of an article first published in the Bay Journal. Its photograph belongs to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and is not reproduced.