Local historian Chris Nichols set out a challenging goal for himself during last Wednesday’s presentation, 250 Years of Garrett County: Local History in the American Story, in the Performing Arts Center at Garrett College.
One of Nichols’ goals was to illustrate “how our story overlaps with the American story, with 250 years in American and Garrett County history in 50-year increments.” He accomplished this by outlining each half-century with parallel local and national timelines, followed by summary and analysis of each period.
Nichols, however, didn’t stop there. The half-century segments also included “hidden histories of people who have been marginalized in history,” accomplished through historical fiction written by Nichols himself. The historical fiction gave voices to:
- an 18th-century Native American living in what became Garrett County;
- an account of 19th-century life by Mary Browning (Meshach’s wife);
- a Drane Family slave talking about agricultural life in the mid-1800s;
- a Black porter discussing living in Garrett County and working at the Deer Park hotel;
- a Garrett County road worker during a 1960s strike; and
- a 21st-century Garrett County woman attempting to put her life back together after opioid addiction and prison time.
Nichols acknowledged that combining factual history with fictionalized history brought him a little bit out of his comfort zone.
“My background includes a physics degree and a science/engineering/process-driven mind,” said Nichols. “I’m still a believer in facts and dates – you have to know when things happen, why they happen, and how they happen in connection with other events.”
Many of the intersections between American and Garrett County history centered on transportation, industrial and scientific advances, economic evolutions, and war. Ironically, one of the region’s most significant military incidents came even before this region was officially a county.
“General Braddock’s 1755 expedition, during the French and Indian War, went through the northern part of what became Garrett County,” said Nichols. “Braddock died of his wounds, and a young British officer, George Washington, led the British troops back in retreat along what became Route 40. He learned a lot of value in leading retreats, which he did quite frequently in the Revolutionary War.”
Nichols covered a lot of the area’s “firsts” during his presentation. These “firsts” included John Friend’s role as the first white settler in the region, when he settled near what is now Friendsville in 1765, as well as the first local citizen to gain national attention: James McHenry.
McHenry was a signer of the United States Constitution, delegate to the Maryland State Convention of 1788, and U.S. Secretary of War under both Washington and John Adams.
“His name lives on at Fort McHenry – the defense of Fort McHenry inspired The Star-Spangled Banner,” noted Nichols.
Nichols also discussed transportation enhancements that helped shape the county, starting with the National Road – the country’s first federally financed highway and a proving ground for national-scale internal improvements. Garrett County’s role in this project included the Casselman Bridge – an 80-foot span erected in 1813 – that was the longest single-span stone arch bridge in the U.S. It served as an important link on the National Road from 1813 to 1933.
Meanwhile, the B&O Railroad reached Oakland in 1851 and “really changed the whole aspect of the county, especially the southern end where communities grew up around the railroad,” said Nichols. Bringing transportation closer to the present, Nichols noted that the 1991 opening of Interstate-68 after a quarter-century of construction made that highway “the new gateway to the West.”
Nichols also covered the area’s economic evolution from subsistence farming to natural resources extraction (coal, timber, etc.) to tourism. Tourism initially bloomed in the mid-to-late 19th century, when city dwellers would come west to the mountains each summer to escape the heat. While that iteration of tourism eventually ended, another started after the creation of Deep Creek Lake.
Nichols did touch on the county’s most recent history, including the 1989 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships on the Savage River, the purchase of Deep Creek Lake by the State of Maryland in 2000, the first utility-scale wind project in 2010, and Maryland’s banning of hydraulic fracking in 2017. He noted, however, that it “becomes more difficult to speak historically the closer we get to the present time.”
Nichols, a senior energy analyst with Australia-based Energy Exemplar, adapted the presentation from his five-part newspaper series entitled 250 Years of Garrett County: Local History in the American Story.
Nichols is a regular presenter in Garrett College’s Joan Crawford Lecture Series, which is also hosted in the performing arts center. Previous Nichols presentations include Energy Resources of Garrett County: A History of (Almost) All-of-the-Above, and Before the Dam: Life Around Deep Creek Pre-1925.
Garrett College sponsored Nichols’ presentation in support of the Garrett 250 celebration, which was organized by the Garrett 250 Commission and supported by the Garrett County Commissioners. The celebration around the nation’s 250th birthday included the July 18th event Celebrating America Together and the July 19th patriotic drone show, which both took place at the Garrett County Fairgrounds.
