Point Lookout

I’ve had Point Lookout State Park in Scotland, Maryland on my list of places to visit/camp for a while now.  The problem is that it is another one of those ‘too far to travel just for the weekend’ places since it would take us about 3 hours to get there in the Phaeton.  So, when we switched gears and went to Shenandoah River State Park yesterday, we decided to take a drive down to Point Lookout today to at least check out the campground.  As it turns out, we did much more.

Driving distance to Point Lookout State Park from Vienna, VA is 180 miles (288 km) round-trip;
about 2 hours each way in the car — if the traffic cooperates.
the map on the right shows some of the other places of interest nearby.

We got a late start, leaving the house just before 10:00a; but we made good time since traffic was light and there wasn’t too much stop-and-go as we drove state routes through one small town after another.

When we arrived at the campground, we found the office locked up and a sign for campers to use the code to open the gate.  Since we didn’t have a code, we parked the car and went for a stroll through the various loops, looking to see which sites might be better than others.  The camping season is from April through October, so this time of the year, the only loop open is Tulip (50A FHU), which was mostly deserted.  Located in the wooded area, almost any of these sites would do for us, but the area we really liked was Green’s Point, which overlooks Lake Conoy.  The sites are 30A electric-only;  very long and have a nice pad on the water with a picnic table.  As it turns out, the particular sites we liked are already booked for the time frame that would work for us this spring, so we may have to back-burner this park until we retire and can be more flexible with our dates.

Site 98 (left top/bottom) on Green’s Point loop would easily work for us.
the pier makes is easy to participate in water activities.

Our campground recon completed, we headed back out to Point Lookout Road and drove to the tip of the peninsula, which is located at the confluence of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.  Despite the stiff breeze coming off the water, we had our picnic lunch at one of the tables near the now-defunct lighthouse.  So glad the sun was out to keep the chill at bay.

Mui’s holding on to me so that the wind doesn’t carry me off :-)))

After lunch, Mui read his newspaper while I wandered around, reading the markers posted nearby, starting with the one about the Point Lookout Lighthouse. Built in 1830, the beacon was decommissioned in 1965.  Rumor has it that it is haunted (cue the Twilight Zone theme).  Meeting the resident ghost will have to wait until another time, however.  The site was locked today and I had to be satisfied with a few photos from my side of the fence.  Luckily, I had my Canon G12 with me, so I could get it through an opening in the fence line for some halfway decent photos in the harsh mid-day light.

The Point Lookout Lighthouse and the smoke house (right) that the keepers used.

The land on which the park sits is steeped in Civil War history.  Where we had our picnic today once stood Hammond General Hospital, a massive structure with 16 wings radiating from an open central area.  It was built in 1862 and could accommodate 1,400 patients.  Both Union and Confederate soldiers were cared for at the hospital.

The massive structure was set on piles several feet tall.  Well over 500 feet (152 m) in
diameter, All but one of the wings were patient wards.
[photo of an image on the marker; sorry about the cracks]

The hospital closed in August 1865 and the entire structure was demolished.  Today, all that remains of this massive structure is a timber outline with a marker in the center.

This marker was installed to mark the general location of the hospital.

On our way out of the park, we stopped to read other markers along the road; some Civil War related, others not.  One such signage described the appalling conditions of the "Contraband Camps” established at Point Lookout — contraband being the word applied to the thousands of slaves that escaped from captivity in the South to liberty in the North.

Some of the residents of the Contraband Camps later found jobs at Point Lookout as military
service staff or laborers, jettisoning the bonds of slavery for the government payroll.

At the time the Army leased the land at Point Lookout to build the hospital, there was a resort here that was built in 1860.  The marker at the site didn’t provide much information about it, except to state that it burned down in 1877 and that another resort replaced it in the 1920s.  All that remains of the second resort are a couple of rusty gear wheels from the power plant that provided lighting for the resort building and power for the water treatment plant.  The resort building was torn down in 1989 due to shoreline erosion.

Top left: postcard image of the resort from its heyday in the 1930’s.
top right: Mui checks out the beach near the resort site.

Just outside the park we checked out two more sites, both honoring the Confederate dead associated with the prisoner-of-war camp that was established at Point Lookout by the Union following the Battle of Gettysburg (1863).  By 1865, there were 20,000+ Confederate soldiers imprisoned here.  By the end of the war, 52,000+ men had passed through; 3,800 of them did not survive the camp.

First, we stopped at  the privately-funded Confederate Memorial Park.  From what I gathered from the signage, it was founded by the Point Lookout Prisoner of War Descendants Organization who wished to “erect a memorial plaza that would be free of government interference and restrictions.”  It’s their intent that the memorial will list the additional documented names of those who died at the camp whose names are not listed on the monument in the adjacent federal cemetery (our next stop).

The flags that circle the plaza belong to the states that seceded from the Union
during the Civil war.  The flag in the center is the Confederate Battle Flag.

Clockwise from top left: illustration from  a POW journal depicting the prisoners cooking rats to fend off starvation ♦♦ glimpse of the memorial plaza ♦♦ historic marker ♦♦ located in the base of the statue, this cauldron was used to prepare food for prisoners — it was known as the “bean pot” ♦♦ The bronze statue represents a Confederate soldier; he is facing south — towards home.

At the Confederate Cemetery next door, we found two monuments — one erected when the federal government began maintaining the property in 1910; and an earlier one that was erected by the State of Maryland in 1876.

The Confederate soldiers and sailors interred here were originally buried in two cemeteries that were near the prisoner-of-war camp.  After the state removed the remains from those sites in 1870, the individual graves could not be identified; hence they were buried in a common grave at this site.

The marble monument (left) erected by the State of Maryland and the 80-foot (24 m) tall
granite obelisk erected by the veteran’s administration to mark the common grave.

Despite what the signage at the Memorial Park indicated to the contrary, we found
the Confederate Battle Flag flying at the cemetery.

Thus we brought our Sunday outing to a closure.  Although the breeze coming off the Chesapeake chilled a day otherwise filled with sunshine, we enjoyed exploring places new to us.  In the process, we learned a bit more about the Civil War history that is strongly intertwined with the lives of so many who call the area home.

We ended the day on a really nice note when we spotted a bald eagle flying overhead.

Not bad for a fully-zoomed point & shoot photo.

What more could we ask for?  Oh yeah — RETIREMENT!  But that will come soon enough.

P.S.  If you’d like to see full-sized versions of the photos making up the collages, click here to go to my online gallery.