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Cunningham Falls State Park is a state park located west of Thurmont, Maryland, USA, on Catoctin Mountain. It features a man-made lake and its namesake waterfall, Cunningham Falls. Cunningham Falls is a cascade, the largest cascading waterfall in Maryland.〔 Catoctin Mountain Park borders the state park to the north. Catoctin Furnace, the remains of a historic iron furnace, can be toured in the park. ==History== The Catoctin Mountain area around Cunningham Falls is rich in local history. Before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans hunted and fished the area. The area was also quarried by Native Americans for rhyolite to make projectile points.〔 During the 19th century, settlers began to cut down the forests around the area to make charcoal to power the Catoctin iron furnace. The charcoal flats can still be seen in the park. The "charcoal flats" are approximately square areas cut flat into the hillsides and linked by mule trails. They were used to build charcoal kilns. Too many years of clear cutting and abuse of the forest led to the destruction of the land.〔 In the 1930s, after years of making charcoal to fuel nearby iron furnaces, mountain farming, and harvesting of trees for timber, land was purchased by the Federal government to be transformed into a productive recreation area, helping to put people back to work during the Great Depression. Beginning in 1935, the Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area was under construction by both the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. The northern portion of the park was transferred to the National Park Service on November 14, 1936, and renamed and reorganized on July 12, 1954, with the southern transferred to Maryland as Cunningham Falls State Park.〔 Known locally as McAfee Falls after a family of early settlers,〔 Cunningham Falls was apparently named after a photographer from Pen Mar Park who frequently photographed the falls.〔 An old homestead can be seen above the falls. There is an abandoned gold or possibly copper mine located in the park. West of the Falls on Big Hunting Creek lies "Dunkards Trough," a natural rock formation in the stream that forms a deep trough used by an early religious group, the Dunkards, for baptisms. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cunningham Falls State Park」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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