Remarkably, Big Pool Named for a Big Pool

The Washington county community of Big Pool is not named, as some like to imagine, for a high-stakes poker game, but for the literal Big Pool, a body of water created before the Civil War by construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal:

Three and a half miles above Lock No. 50 and opposite Fort Frederick the canal passed through a piece of low, swampy land, which immediately filling up to the canal level, formed what is known as the “Big Pool,” a beautiful sheet of water of an average width of seven hundred feet, abounding in fish and a favorite resort of water fowl. (Williams 212)

The original Big Pool. (Wikimedia Commons)

Today, the pool is one of the attractions of Fort Frederick State Park, and it still abounds in fish and wildlife, according to the C&O Canal Trust.

Besides its name, Big Pool has a few other distinctions, all of which we'll detail later:

  • Fort Frederick itself was an active post during three wars, but was never attacked -- though it is, allegedly, haunted.
  • Nearby C&O canal ghost stories include the legend of Stickpile Hill.
  • The Baltimore Batman was killed in August 2015 on I-70 near the Big Pool exit.

Sources:

"Big Pool." C&O Canal Trust. https://www.canaltrust.org/pyv/big-pool/. Accessed 21 Sept. 2021. 

"Big Pool, Maryland." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Pool,_Maryland. Accessed 21 Sept. 2021.

"Fort Frederick State Park." Maryland Department of Natural Resources. https://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/pages/western/fortfrederick.aspx. Accessed 21 Sept. 2021.

Kenny, Hamill. The Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1984; 2nd printing, 1999.

Williams, Thomas J.C. A History of Washington County, Maryland. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Runk and Titsworth, 1906. Accessed via Archive.org on 21 Sept. 2021.

 

 

 


 

 

 

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