You are looking at vistas along the Long Pond Trail, an isolated and somewhat arduous trek through some of the loveliest mountainous paths that make up the Green Ridge State Forest in western Maryland. Like so much of the Atlantic seaboard states, the forests of the Green Ridge were all but eliminated around the late 1800’s/early 1900s. In the case of the Green Ridge Mountains, the culprit was not the usual suspect (mining), but rather from one family — the Mertons — who desired to make “the largest Apple orchard in the universe”, resulting in the deforestation of most of this land by the time the Mertons’ business collapsed in 1918.
The state of Maryland acquired 14,400 acres in 1931, and the CCC worked to rebuild the wildlife. Today, the Green Ridge State Forest is about 47,560 acres, with some of the land still in use for commercial interests, but much of it open to hunting, camping, and hikers. The Long Pond Trail featured here runs partly along the Fifteen Mile Creek, located in the forest.
Source(s): @ghosttowns.com/states/md/greenridgestateforest-formerappleorchard.com. wikipedia.
