You may know this area from a movie. In the 1990s, three film students went looking for a witch near Burkittsville, Maryland and never came back - on screen, anyway.
The Blair Witch Project was pure fiction, but the aftermath for the residents of southwestern Frederick County wasn't . Fans stole the welcome signs from the village of 200 that were featured in the genre-creating horror film and prowled the town’s cemetery after dark. Burkittsville spent years wishing away the film phenomenon that brought strangers to their small town.
Only recently has the town found terms it can live with, hosting anniversary screenings that raised money for the cemetery from the film's opening scene.
Burkittsville's Union Cemetery
But the communities along Maryland’s South Mountain never needed an invented legend: there are plenty of true stories here.
Where Appalachian stories meet Maryland folklore tradition
Frederick County has its own cryptid, and the Snallygaster's history is stranger than any screenplay. German settlers arriving in the 1730s brought tales of a Schneller Geist, a fast-moving "quick ghost." Nearly two centuries later, in February 1909, editors at Middletown's Valley Register revived the creature as a hoax to sell newspapers, with tales that exploited the sordid racial history of Maryland amid segregation and Jim Crow.
This wasn’t the only folk story that came from the region.
In 1882, Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren published South-Mountain Magic, tales she gathered from neighbors after buying the old South Mountain Inn at Turner's Gap atop South Mountain. She wrote about witches and wizards, ghost lights, folk cures, and a creature known as the Snarly Yow, a black dog said to appear along the National Road (modern-day Alternate Route 40) at night, unkillable, vanishing when residents tried to swing at it or take a rifle shot at it. Dahlgren documented these stories by talking with local residents, and they preserve these folk stories for us to interpret today.
South Mountain in the distance looming over Main Street Middletown
Two decades after the Civil War, journalist George Alfred Townsend, "Gath" to his readers, came to Crampton's Gap above Burkittsville researching his novel Katy of Catoctin and decided to purchase land for an estate in the mountain pass. He was inspired in part based on the historic and beautiful landscape he found. He built a mountaintop estate here and, in 1896, raised a 50-foot arch to war correspondents killed in combat during the Civil War, long called the first monument of its kind in the country to those who told the stories of life in a war zone.
The War Correspondents Memorial Arch at Gathland State Park
Where to Learn More
Start at the South Mountain Heritage Society in Burkittsville, in the 1829 church that served as a field hospital after the Battle of South Mountain during the Civil War. Hours are seasonal, so check ahead. Then drive up to Gathland State Park, where the arch still stands and you can visit Gath's unused mausoleum and its inscription: "Good Night Gath." The stunning Dahlgren Chapel stands near the Appalachian Trail at Turner's Gap, built by Madeleine Dahlgren - it's a great spot to photograph on a hike along the AT.
Burkittsville, MD
Centuries of American history at the foot of the mountain
South Mountain has always been an obstacle that people had to get through or travel over. Settlers pushed west over Turner's Gap on the National Road. To the south, the B&O Railroad and the C&O Canal squeezed along the Potomac River, elbowing each other for room at Point of Rocks and on the journey by South Mountain where it hit the river. On September 14, 1862, two armies fought for the three gaps in the Battle of South Mountain - the first major Civil War battle on Maryland soil, three days before Antietam.
Monument to Major General Jesse Reno, killed at Fox's Gap during the Battle of South Mountain on September 14, 1862
Where to learn more
Trace these stories at South Mountain State Battlefield, Gathland State Park, along the C&O Canal National Historical Park, and on Main Street Brunswick, where the Brunswick Heritage Museum tells the story of a city the railroad built.
Hike the mountain
The Appalachian Trail spends roughly 41 miles in Maryland, most of it tracing the South Mountain crest along Frederick County's western edge. Climbing north from the Potomac, you reach Weverton Cliffs and its long view of the Potomac River passing through the mountains and the City of Brunswick, then easy ridgeline to Gathland and Crampton's Gap. Beyond that: climbing Lambs Knoll, then the battlefield at Fox's Gap before reaching Turner's Gap, where the trail crosses the old National Pike near Dahlgren Chapel.
Hikers on the Appalachian Trail at Gathland State Park
A spirited taste of the region
Before Prohibition, Maryland ranked among the nation's top rye producers, and some of its best-known distilleries stood near Burkittsville. The Horsey and Ahalt distilleries once stood between Brunswick and Burkittsville, utilizing water from South Mountain and locally grown rye to make Maryland rye whiskey. They were perfectly placed to put barrels onto the B&O Railroad at Brunswick and then ship them across the country and around the world.
Drive the 1862 Antietam Campaign Scenic Byway between Brunswick and Burkittsville and you're crossing that vanished landscape.
Taste the history of this region back in Frederick. McClintock Distilling worked with the South Mountain Heritage Society to identify the heirloom rye once grown here. Tenth Ward Distilling pours Maryland-style rye downtown. Springfield Manor distills grain from its own farm. And Dragon Distillery makes a whiskey called Snallygaster, an ode to Frederick’s own legendary cryptid creature.
