Patapsco River – Baltimore Magazine

The Baltimore Area’s Best Swimming Holes

Ron Cassie — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Views from the Hammerman Area of Gunpowder Falls State Park in Middle River. —Courtesy of Baltimore County Government via Facebook

As we make our way through another sweltering summer, check out these fun swimming spots (many of which are free!) to cool off in the area’s many rivers and streams while experiencing a new neck of the woods.

Beaver Dam Swimming Club
Nestled on a 30-acre complex, this freshwater quarry is not to be missed by rope-swing aficionados. 10820 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville

Hammerman Beach (Gunpowder Falls State Park)
Located in Gunpowder Falls State Park, this area—equipped with lifeguards on duty—includes 1,500 feet of beach for daytime swimming on the banks of the Gunpowder. 7200 Graces Quarters Road, Middle River

Hart-Miller Island State Park
This 1,110-acre island is located in Baltimore County where the Middle River meets the Chesapeake Bay. Mouth of the Middle River, Essex

Mayo Beach Park
Pack up a cooler and spend the day lounging on the sand at this Anne Arundel County beach, which is free to visit (with an online reservation) Memorial Day through Labor Day. 4150 Honeysuckle Drive, Edgewater

North Point State Park
North Point features beautiful views of the Chesapeake Bay and includes a waterfront that is open to swimmers and waders. 8400 North Point Road, Edgemere

Patapsco Valley State Park
There are many reasons to visit the gem of Central Maryland, including hiking, mountain biking, camping, bird watching, and picnicking. But swimming—or more accurately, dipping—in the cool waters of the Patapsco River sometimes gets forgotten. 8020 Baltimore National Pike, Ellicott City

Rocky Point Park and Beach
The 375-acre park sits at the mouth of the Back and Middle rivers and is open year-round for fishing, boating, and picnicking from sunrise to sunset—and for swimming at the beach from Memorial Day to Labor Day, when lifeguards are on duty. 2200 Rocky Point Road, Essex

Updated June 2025. Fact-checking by Alana McCarthy Light

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Field Notes: Crab Recovery, Bay Grass Resilience, Middle Branch Makeover, and Insect-Eating Plants

Lydia Woolever — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 12:16:00 +0000

CRABS GONE WILD?
According to an annual advisory report published by the Chesapeake Bay Program, Maryland blue crab populations have increased 60 percent over the last year. Despite last year’s heavy spring rains, which can impact water salinity, visibility, and oxygen levels, as well as a slow start to this year’s spring harvesting season, adult females were up 29 percent, adult males up were 38 percent, and juveniles were up 50 percent, though many watermen throughout the state have complained of poor catches. The resurgence could reduce prices throughout the summer. New research from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science also suggests that blue crab season, which are notoriously fickle year over year, might become longer and more plentiful in future decades due to the milder winters of global warming, though warmer waters could also lead to other new environmental issues for the estuary ecosystem.

GRASS IS GREENER

Despite last year’s record rainfall, the Chesapeake Bay’s underwater grasses proved resilient with nominal losses in 2018. More than 91,000 acres of underwater grasses were recorded baywide, compared to 2017’s 105,000 acres, with an estimate 50,000 acres in Maryland and some waterways still surpassing their restoration goals for aquatic vegetation. These grasses require clear water to survive and provide important habitat for wildlife such as blue crabs, fish, and waterfowl. Last year’s heavy rains carried a deluge of sediment and nutrients from fertilizer, sewage, and pollution into the bay, which impact clarity and oxygen levels. As a result, this summer’s “dead zone,” aka the annual summer area within the bay with little or no oxygen, is also forecast to be one of the largest on record this summer.

SHELL YEAH

Since launching in 2014, the Greater Baltimore Oyster Partnership, a collaboration between the Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor Initiative, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and numerous downtown businesses, have announced that they have grown their millionth oyster in the Inner Harbor. With the help of corporate volunteer oyster gardens and restoration projects along the Patapsco River, the initiative aims to increase the health of local waterways, as an adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water each day. And just yesterday, five million spat, or baby oysters, were planted in the Patapsco River, officially meeting the partnership’s goal of doing so by 2020.

WATER WORLD

The Middle Branch of the Patapsco River will soon be getting a facelift with ambitious new plans recently winning approval in a design competition for the multi-year renovation of the South Baltimore waterfront. If finalized, it would include an overhaul of the century-old Hanover Street Bridge into a no-traffic green space, as well as an 11-mile waterfront park that runs along Cherry Hill, Brooklyn, Westport, Riverside, and Port Covington with park trails, boardwalks, boat launches, an amphitheater, and other recreational spaces, while also constructing a new road to the nearby neighborhoods. The plans, submitted by Dutch architecture firm West 8, have been given the green light by Mayor Jack Young and are currently under review by city agencies.

SCI-FI NATURE
Earlier this summer, a carnivorous plant called dwarf sundew was discovered in Maryland for the very first time. One of nearly 20 types of carnivorous plants in the state, the small plant has pink petals and paddle-shaped leaves that form a rosette at the base and are covered in green and red hairs that exude a stick liquid that attracts and then traps insects. It was found on the lower Eastern Shore in Worcester County.

RENEWABLE RULES
Earlier this month, the Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the state’s public service commission could trump the power of local government to approve future power plant projects, particularly relating to solar and wind energy. Citing state law that mandates reduced greenhouse gas emissions, the ruling in accordance with state law. Advocates have said that local jurisdictions have hindered development, while critics have cited residents’ concerns over eyesores and agricultural disruptions in rural communities. Legislature passed earlier this year also requires that Maryland get half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. At last count in 2017, water and solar accounted for 10 percent of Maryland’s total net electricity generation.

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Harbor Report Card: ‘F’

Ron Cassie — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 19:20:00 +0000

Waterfront Partnership board member Michael Hankin said he would’ve been grounded—”in his room”—if he’d ever brought home grades like the marks the Baltimore Harbor and its tributaries received on its annual report card Wednesday.

Released at a press conference today at the Marriott Waterfront hotel near the harbor’s innovative, year-old trash wheel, the overall water quality at the Baltimore Harbor scored an “F” in the 2014 report put together by the Waterfront Partnership and Blue Water Baltimore. The mark is a repeat of last year’s overall grade, but as Hankin and others noted, water quality in the Baltimore Harbor and two of three tributaries nonetheless made improvements in their scores. The Gwynn Falls stream, for example, is the first of the four distinct waterways measured—the Jones Falls stream, Baltimore Harbor, and the tidal portion of the Patapsco River are the other three—to receive a passing mark, albeit a D-minus, this year.

While the city has made strides with its expanded street cleaning efforts and stream restoration projects, and “Mr. Trash Wheel“—as the unique garbage collecting device in the Inner Harbor is known—has removed some 160 tons of waste since its installation last year, big challenges remain in terms of reducing stormwater runoff and sewage pollution. (Efforts are also underway, said Adam Lindquist, manager of the Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor initiative, to raise $500,000 and put a second trash wheel in Canton, across the street from the Boston Street Safeway, where the buried Harris Creek reaches and drains into the harbor.)

In 2014, Baltimore City reported 586 sewer overflows to the state Department of Environment, totaling 24.6 million gallons of sewage, according to the report. Those pollutants not only add fecal matter and bacteria to waterways, posing direct threats to human health, they can smother stream and river habitats, reducing oxygen levels and choking aquatic plant life and animals.

Based on the data, the Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor initiative is admittedly not on pace to make its goal of a “fishable, swimmable” Baltimore Harbor by 2020—a goal we examined in a story two years ago. Given the ongoing collapse of the city’s century-old sewer infrastructure, which director of public works Rudy Chow, also on hand Wednesday, has called “a ticking time bomb,” a drastic improvement in the harbor’s water quality isn’t likely in the immediate future.

Since 2002, the city has been under a consent decree, entered with the federal government and state, to complete a comprehensive wastewater rehabilitation program. The deadline to complete that overhaul is January 1, 2016—a date that the city is currently negotiating to push back. Chow said the studies and design plans for the estimated $1 billion effort have been completed and relining and replacement construction projects have begun. He would not estimate, however, the percentage of the overall work that has been completed to date, or speculate at the date of the expected deadline extension.

“I wish we could say the [sewer and other] infrastructure efforts by the city are making a difference, but we can’t say that yet,” David Flores, the Harbor Waterkeeper told Baltimore magazine. Noting the relatively short period covered since the first comprehensive harbor report card in 2012, Flores said, weather conditions, such as last year’s exceedingly cold winter, could be responsible for the recent, slight uptick in scores.

Progress reducing watershed run-off, more so than wastewater, may be more likely in the near future, given the passage of the so-called “rain tax” several years ago. The General Assembly last session, per Gov. Larry Hogan’s campaign pledge, did pull the requirement that the state’s 10 largest jurisdictions mandate a property fee to help reduce stormwater run-off—which carries chemicals, litter, road salt and toxins into waterways. But Baltimore City and the nine counties affected by the legislation are still required to find ways to pay and fund projects that reduce run-off and protect the health of the Chesapeake Bay, and by extension, the harbor and its tributaries.

“There’s a five-year timeline. By 2018, jurisdictions must remove or treat 20 percent of their impermeable cover,” Flores said. “It’s going to take millions of dollars to accomplish, but 20 percent is quite a substantial amount that will make an impact on water quality.”

Both the Waterfront Partnership—a group of private businesses, nonprofits and city agencies—and Blue Water Baltimore—which formed several years ago as a merger of several local environmental groups—also support efforts to ban plastic bags in the city and the state.

Last year, Baltimore City delegate Brooke Lierman introduced The Community Cleanup And Greening Act (HB 551), which would have prohibited the distribution of the disposable plastic bags statewide and placed a 10-cent fee on paper bags, but the measure failed to win support in committee. In Baltimore, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake vetoed a plastic bag ban passed by the City Council last year. Lierman remains optimistic that with growing support the harbor can return to a healthy state.

“A couple of years ago, the Charles River in Boston hosted its first public swim in 50 years,” Leirman said. “I believe if Boston can do it, Baltimore can do it.”

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