Cumberland

We got into Cumberland on Labor Day and discovered they take the holiday seriously – just about everything was closed! It’s an odd town that’s easy to dismiss. An elevated freeway runs right through the heart of the city, and we’ve driven along it several times glancing at the solid old brick buildings and churches as we whizz on by. But this time, there was rain on the horizon so we took a rest day (I thought we would be much better off not riding on the C&O canal towpath for some 50 miles in the rain), which then raised the question – what do you do with a day in Cumberland?

It turns out that the city’s history is as fascinating and interesting as its modern-day residents are strange and depressing. There is a pedestrian walkway downtown with beautiful old banks (not yet turned into bars!)

but for the most part the area is deserted save for a cluster of down-on-their-luck locals with all the markers that get an urban snob’s tsk-tsk meter running – smoking, overweight, giant soda drinking and physically unattractive with bonus points for being shirtless and not in a good way. Assumptions about and casual attitudes toward obese, smoking rednecks may be the last redoubt for the prejudice of white urban liberals, of which I am surely one.

Cumberland is of course the terminus of the canal that ran from Georgetown, and before Cincinnati acquired the moniker, it was known as the Queen City of the West. Although the canal never got further, the railroad did and Cumberland prospered through the 1800s and up to the Great Depression as a transportation hub with a manufacturing base and a rich coal industry the fruits of which were avidly sought by the British navy.

The historic residential part of town near the old fort is dominated by the courthouse and has several outstanding brick homes.

George Washington had a close connection to the town at the early and end stages of his military career. He was the ranking officer to have survived General Braddock’s ill-fated foray against the French during the colonial French and Indian War, and the last time Washington wore a military uniform was when he came out to Cumberland as the nation’s Commander in Chief to review the federal troops who were being dispatched to Pennsylvania to crush the Whiskey Rebellion. On both occasions, this was his headquarters:

In a fitting example of Cumberland’s odd duality of historic charm and contemporary desultitude, our efforts to learn more about the town came to naught as we were summarily kicked out of the local museum!

Despite the presence of three people working at the small museum in a wing of a public building, the fact that there was no volunteer at the desk meant that technically the museum was closed and so we were shown the door.
The next day, with a backward glance or two, we set out on the formidable – for bikers – C&O Canal towpath. Here’s what the canal looks like at its end:

Our last view of the city:

And here’s Rachael rarin’ to go: