This report covers my first visit to the Bacon Ridge Conservation Area
in Crownsville, Maryland. This area is not yet an official "park" -
while it is thanfully protected, it isn't really open to the public
yet. I believe that this region was one of the areas in which the late
Colby Rucker performed tree surveys in this part of Anne Arundel
county: I can see what drew him to this place since it is beautiful.

Bacon Ridge / Scenic Rivers Land Trust Park: This park as of 2009 is
neither finished nor open to the general public regularly. It is
located not far from the Renaissance Faire in Crownsville Maryland,
off of General’s Highway. Getting to the park is currently a strange
experience since one must drive down a small path past the ruins of
old buildings that were once part of a state or county mental
hospital: most of the park land at one time belonged to the hospital,
but it was never developed, thankfully. A couple of times a year, the
park is opened to the public, though the events tend to attract mostly
those who are truly interested in a walk through bushwhacked, unpaved
trails – you even have to sign a disclosure form since the park is, in
many ways, still wild. Currently, the Land Trust owns about 600 acres
that form the core of the park, with other plots of adjacent land
being added, as they are able to do so. Once the boundaries are
established, paving the trails (or at least stabilizing them so they
are no longer vulnerable to erosion) and adding an official parking
lot and entrance road will be the next steps.

The trip through this park (which has an impressive mix of terrain
features and a good variety of trees) starts by crossing over I-97 on
large foot bridge until one reaches a flat field that slopes upward to
tree-topped hills, while a trail spirals downwards past the base of
the hill. Our birding group of about 10 people followed that trail
downwards until we reached a marshy area. Traversing this region was
difficult since it was a shoe-sucking, muddy swamp (this area is a
prime candidate for a footbridge in the future to keep shoes dry and
the land from being trampled.) After crossing the swamp, with plenty
of stops to look for various interesting birds, we crossed over a
small stream and started heading upwards. After a bit, we crossed
another small stream while carefully avoiding the poison ivy that
unkindly covered the trunks of the trees one would normally use as
handholds for the small stream crossing, and we then started a real
climb up the hillside.

Once we traveled up the hills a good distance, we got a better view of
the park as a whole: off to the right was a steep drop down to more
wetlands, while to the left the rest of the hill rose up above us. We
passed through this type of terrain for a while, past some thickets
that were great homes for many more birds, until we eventually reached
a fork in the road. A huge tulip poplar had cracked apart and crashed
onto one of the paths, but we wouldn’t have to scramble over that
until the return trip. We took the right hand path that lead us around
a few more bends and eventually downhill until we reached the beaver
pond.

The “pond” is large enough to be a small lake: it’s surface was smooth
and tranquil and native water lilies covered it – these plants flower
in June, which must be an amazing sight to see. We did some more bird
watching here and saw a good variety of birds (I can’t recall the
names of everything we saw, but I did hear a wider variety of bird
calls in this park than I’ve heard in any other park.) We then went
around another corner to another park of the beaver pond to see the
actual beaver dam. While there, we also spotted a huge turtle – I was
told it was either a red-bellied turtle or a snapping turtle. Either
way, it was the “king of the pond” for sure!

We were running a bit late at this point, so we started to ascend the
other side of the hill to head back to the starting point. We rounded
another bend that provided a good overlook from the hillside down into
the rather steep valley: there’s a huge beech tree here that is one of
the largest I’ve ever seen in the wild. After that, we reached the
fallen tulip tree and retraced our steps through the wilds back to the
start.

Forest Composition: The forest here is an interesting mix of upland
and lowland species, often growing in rather close proximity to each
other. Oak trees of various types (red, white, chestnut, etc.) were
very common, and some reached a good size. Tulip trees were reasonably
common as well, and as always seems to be the case with this species,
they could grow to huge proportions. American beech trees were mixed
in with the other trees, including some beech-tulip poplar mixes,
which is a rather unusual mix since beech trees normally grow in
higher, drier environments than tulip poplars. Some of the beech trees
have reached very respectable sizes. Sweetgum trees grew in clumps in
many regions, their presence given away by their spiky seed balls. I’m
sure that there were some hickories in the mix as well, though they
were hard to pick out from all the other trees. Maples trees grew here
and there as well, and the park had a few conifers, but not many.
Sycamore trees were oddly absent from the parts of the park that we
visited: I didn’t see more than a few of them, and none of them were
very large. The park guide who lead our group told us that certain
parts of the park were once known as good areas to harvest chestnuts
many decades ago, so there may still be some American chestnuts
lurking in some parts of the park, but the guide didn’t know of any
mature trees, so they are probably just stump sprouts as best.

Here’s a weblink to the Scenic River Land Trust:

http://www.srlt.org/events.shtml#walk

They are a very dedicated group and I truly hope that this park
achieves its great potential and thus becomes the largest and probably
least altered by humanity park in Anne Arundel county.

I've have some photos that'll be passed along to the webmaster so when
this article is posted to the website, they can be included.

In short, I highly recommend a visit to this park during one of the
"Walk in the Woods" events, and especially when the park is eventually
open to the general public.

Beaver Pond

Group Shot with large beech

Scattered big trees