Deep Creek Lake State Park
898 State Park Rd
Swanton, MD
A quiet mountain corner of Maryland's biggest lake, with swimming beaches, forest trails up Meadow Mountain, and a nature center, all west of the Eastern Continental Divide.
In the far western tip of Maryland, where the Appalachian ridges pile up into the state's high country, lies a lake that surprises people who think of Maryland only as tidewater and the Chesapeake. Deep Creek Lake is the largest lake in the state, a cool, clear reservoir wrapped in mountains, and while much of its shore has grown into a busy resort area, one long stretch of it is kept wild as a state park at the foot of Meadow Mountain.
Deep Creek Lake State Park is that natural refuge: eighteen hundred acres of forest and shoreline with swimming beaches, a mile of lake frontage, twenty miles of trails, and a nature center, sitting west of the Eastern Continental Divide in the Mississippi watershed. It is the place to come to the lake for the lake itself, the swimming, the woods, and the mountain air, rather than for the shops and rentals across the water.
What Guests Love
- Two swimming beaches on a clean mountain lake, a rare thing in Maryland
- Twenty miles of hiking and biking trails climbing into the Meadow Mountain forest
- A modern Discovery Center nature museum that helps kids and families read the landscape
- The cool, high-country setting, noticeably crisper than the Maryland lowlands
Worth Knowing
- This is the quieter, natural side of Deep Creek Lake, distinct from the resort development at the McHenry end, so come here for beach, forest, and trails
- The park sits high in the mountains and stays cool, so pack a layer even in summer and expect real winter weather in the cold months
- Trails climb Meadow Mountain and connect to a larger network, so pick a route that matches your time and energy
- The lake is a working man-made reservoir with a shoreline that adjoins a natural resources management area, so respect posted boundaries and swim only at the guarded beaches
Details
Swanton, MD
Learn about Deep Creek Lake State Park
A lake built on Deep Creek
Deep Creek Lake is not natural. In the 1920s the Youghiogheny Hydroelectric Company dammed Deep Creek to generate power, flooding the valley and creating what would become Maryland's largest lake, a nearly four-thousand-acre sheet of water high in the Garrett County mountains. In the decades that followed, the lake grew into one of the mid-Atlantic's favorite mountain getaways, its shoreline filling with cabins, marinas, and the ski-and-summer resort scene around McHenry.
To keep part of that shoreline in public hands and natural, Maryland opened Deep Creek Lake State Park in 1959 on the lake's eastern side. The park adjoins the larger Deep Creek Lake Natural Resources Management Area, so together they protect a broad band of forest and water, giving the crowded lake a green, quiet counterweight that anyone can enjoy.
Beaches, trails, and Meadow Mountain
The heart of a visit is the water. The park has two swimming beaches along its mile of shoreline, a genuine mountain-lake swim that is a rarity in Maryland, plus places to launch a boat or a paddleboard and picnic under the trees. On a warm summer day the beaches are the draw, and the cool, clear water is the reward.
Behind the shore, the land rises into Meadow Mountain, and the park's twenty miles of hiking and biking trails climb into that forest. One favorite is the short Brant Mine Trail, a half-mile walk to the site of a historic coal mine and old homestead, a reminder that these mountains were once dug as well as logged. The park is also a main access point for the longer Meadow Mountain Trail and, in winter, for the Deep Creek Lake snowmobile trail, so the same trailheads serve hikers, bikers, and cold-weather riders through the year.
A park for every season
Deep Creek Lake State Park is built to be visited year round. In summer it is a beach-and-trail park; in autumn the surrounding hardwood forest turns brilliant with color; and in winter the high, snowy setting near the Eastern Continental Divide draws snowshoers, cross-country skiers, and snowmobilers, with the downhill slopes of the resort area close by.
At the center of it all sits the park's Discovery Center, a spacious nature museum that explains the geology, wildlife, and human history of the western Maryland highlands and makes a fine first stop with kids or on a rainy afternoon. Between the beaches, the mountain trails, the campground, and the nature center, the park packs a lot of the high country into one accessible place, and it does it on the quiet side of a lake that most visitors only ever see from the resort shore.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near McHenry
Swallow Falls State Park
About 15 miles
A stunning gorge park on the Youghiogheny River with Muddy Creek Falls, Maryland's tallest waterfall, reached by an easy loop trail through old-growth hemlocks.
Herrington Manor State Park
About 15 miles
A CCC-era park with a small swimming lake, rental cabins, and forest trails, quieter and more rustic than the big lake.
Cranesville Swamp Preserve
About 12 miles
A rare boreal bog on the Maryland-West Virginia line, a Nature Conservancy preserve with a boardwalk through a cold pocket of northern plants left over from the Ice Age.
McHenry
About 6 miles
The resort hub at the lake's northern tip, with marinas, the Wisp ski area, and the closest cluster of services and dining.