The Howard County
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VOL.15, NO.12
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I N S I D E …
PHOTO BY ED WARNER
By Ed Warner At Patapsco Valley State Park in Ellicott City, history has a face: that of Edward Johnson, who has volunteered there for nearly 30 years. If you visit the park’s famous Swinging Bridge on a sunny Saturday, you’re likely to meet Johnson, 82, and hear his stories of the park’s history. Before directing you to the popular Cascade Trail nearby, Johnson may tell you that the bridge was built over the Patapsco River in 1859 for mill workers. He might add that in the 1920s, the Baltimore department store Hutzler’s gave its salesmen and their families free company tents in this park (though the salesmen still had to commute to work). “Some authors have called the Patapsco ‘the river that built America,’” Johnson told the Beacon. Johnson started as a park volunteer in 1996, working with children’s summer programs, then spent 16 years as a volunteer. When work was slow at the visitor center, he’d pick up one of its history books. “I started reading all the materials” on the park’s history, Johnson said. “It was fascinating.” Some of its history is tragic. The Swinging Bridge was destroyed several times, including once in 1925 when a group of 42 youths tried jumping on it simultaneously; the 30-foot fall killed one. Perhaps the park’s worst tragedy was the 1868 Great Flood, which killed 39 people in what’s now the Orange Grove area. The flood also destroyed homes and mills along the river, including a nail factory. This destruction set the stage for the land to become a 43-acre state forest reserve in 1907 and a state park, Maryland’s
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Ed Johnson, 82, has been a volunteer park ranger in Patapsco Valley State Park in Ellicott City for three decades. Since Johnson retired as a teacher and principal, he has put in 4,000 hours as a volunteer and all-around historian.
first, in the 1930s. It’s now a 16,000-acre state park. As Johnson often tells visitors, there were 33 “firsts” that happened in the area. For instance, the nation’s first commercial railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, ran through the park on the Thomas Viaduct,
which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
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