Gold Mine Trail, Great Falls, Maryland

We made another visit to Great Falls, Maryland, which has a national park that is part of the C&O Canal. The area has lots of trails. One leads to Maryland's gold mine! We wanted to check it out, so we started on the spur that led to the gold mine loop.

Connecting the canal path to the gold mine path

The kids were more or less excited to be there... 

Enthusiasm!

The trail winds through the woods between the Potomac River and Macarthur Boulevard. Some of the downed trees are quite picturesque.

Trees are not allowed to cross the path!

One with a lot of branches

After a while we made it to the site of the gold mine. Back in 1861, a Union soldier was stationed on the Maryland side of the Potomac and noticed the glint of gold in a stream as he was cleaning up. He came back after the war, bought some farmland, and started mining for gold. Over 30 mines sprang up in the area but not much came out of the ground. What's left of the building where they refined the ore into gold still stands, though it is fenced off to protect unintelligent visitors.

Information sign

Ore processing building

A future water tower

We stopped for a snack before continuing around the loop. The plan was to take another spur to the canal so we wouldn't have to repeat our path.

Having a snack

Low tree

Successfully hiding behind mom

An odd collapse

The trail got steeper as we headed down to the water.

Virginia in the distance

Not fast enough to escape the picture

Our exit

Looking back uphill

We saw another ruins that we thought must be the house of a lock-keeper. The canal has a lot of locks in this area to avoid the falls and rapids on the Potomac. 

Waterfront property!

The canal and the river

The road led to a dead end with a geocache that I found while everyone else got a head start to the car.

Ground zero for the geocache

The canal has a covered pedestrian bridge over it that let us go over to the main tow path.

Why make the bridge like this?

View up river/canal

View down river/canal

We spotted a blue heron by the canal. It was far enough away that we couldn't disturb it even with taking a picture.

Chilling on the canal's shore

The park has still other trails, so another post may come sooner or later.