Towpath

A broken link in America's longest national park is nearly fixed. Two National Park Service officials said Friday that repairs to the Big Slackwater section of the C&O Canal National Historical Park will be completed soon and the park might reopen next month. For years, about 2.7 miles of the park at Big Slackwater has been closed and considered impassable, especially by bicycle. Hikers and bikers have been forced to take a hazardous 4.5-mile detour along Dam 4, Dellinger and Avis Mill roads, which have no shoulders.

As a park ranger at C&O Canal National Historical Park, Margaret Anderson left her mark. “When she said she was going to do something, she did it,” said C&O Canal Park Ranger Leigh Zahm, Anderson's former colleague. “She's someone I always would have backed up. She's someone I'll always remember.” Anderson, who worked at the C&O Canal from 2004-08, was shot and killed in the line of duty on Jan. 1 this year in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state. She was 34. Zahm and his colleagues are ensuring that her life won't soon be forgotten.

Cub Scout Pack 34 members from Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hagerstown hiked a portion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath at the Cushwa Basin in Williamsport on June 16. Two Boy Scouts, Michael and Thomas Milner from Troop 66, assisted the pack with the outing.

To help encourage visitors on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal to take a detour into Sharpsburg, town residents took part Tuesday in the unveiling of an interpretive  exhibit at Snyder's Landing along the canal towpath. “This will help bring industry to the town,” said Sharpsburg resident David Peters, 74. “People will see the signs, and they'll remember Sharpsburg.” The exhibit includes three signs showing the relationship between the canal and Sharpsburg, how to reach Sharpsburg a little more than mile away, and how to get to Williamsport and Shepherdstown, W. Va. Sharpsburg resident Natoma Reed-Vargason, 53, who operates a catering business called Cookies Cooking Co. just off the towpath at Snyder's Landing, said the exhibit will help draw interest to the town.

A man with minor injuries and his teenage son were rescued Saturday night after they became lost on a closed section of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park towpath and the father fell into the Potomac River while trying to get onto a construction barge, a Williamsport Volunteer Fire and Emergency Medical Services official said Sunday. The Delaware man and his son, of Hedgesville, W.Va., biked from Williamsport to Harpers Ferry, W.Va., on Saturday, taking the detour around the closed Big Slackwater section of the towpath, Williamsport fire spokesman Scott Bragunier said.

Hagerstown resident Izzy Nelson was riding his bicycle through downtown Hagerstown Thursday. “I love the open air,” he said. “It's a mild time, not too hot, and not too cold.” Nelson, 40, was among area residents taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather in March by going bike riding. Nelson said that he prefers riding a bicycle to driving a car, and bicycling is his primary source of transportation. “I can probably get to places in Hagerstown faster than other vehicles,” he said.

Extravagant stadium an unnecessary expense To the editor: I just received my propaganda pamphlet from G.A. MAAX and I am past angry. I graduated from school in Montgomery County, Md. - one of the top school systems in the country - and I played sports. None of the high schools there had synthetic turf. We played in whatever the conditions were that day ... grass, mud, puddles, etc. ... and we were proud of it.  The group pushing this athletic field renovation is going to deprive everyone's kids of that privilege.

Some of the towns along its towpath were settled more that two centuries ago and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal itself is 180 years old, so what will the Canal Towns Partnership change for those communities and the millions of visitors who hike or bike past them each year? "This program gets them off the towpath and into the towns and spending money," Thomas B. Riford, president and chief executive officer of the Hagerstown-Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said at Friday's official launch of the partnership at Ferry Hill, the mansion that once served as the C&O Canal National Historical Park's headquarters.

Eight communities bordering the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park will announce a new collaborative visitor attraction initiative Friday at 10 a.m. at Ferry Hill Place, 16500 Shepherdstown Pike, Sharpsburg. The new initiative, known as the Canal Towns Partnership, is a regional cooperative effort among towns in Maryland and West Virginia bordering the C&O Canal park to ensure that visitors to the region and cyclists and hikers on the towpath find welcoming communities, and a variety of services and amenities.

The Labor Day holiday on the calendar wasn't the only thing marking the unofficial end of summer Monday. It seemed Mother Nature was ready for a change, too, as the day was overcast and nowhere near as hot and humid as many of this summer's days. Hagerstown resident Debbie Dawson, 43, was ready for the end of "hot and sticky" days. "I don't like this kind of weather. I'm ready for the fall," said Dawson, who was walking along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath near Cushwa Basin on Monday morning.