Harriet Tubman

Underground Railroad

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

National Monument

Maryland

A Different Kind of 19th-century Battlefield

BACKGROUND Tubman was a master at surreptitiously 

navigating the wetlands and landscapes of the area 

where she was born in Dorchester County, Maryland to 

guide others to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

NPS illustration

Popularized with a name that reflected 

the technological marvel of its day, the 

Underground Railroad was a resistance 

movement and secret network that 

helped enslaved people emancipate 

themselves to lives of freedom. While 

people held in bondage sought freedom 

and self-determination through escape 

and flight from the earliest days of the 

nation, this activity intensified in the 

years prior to the Civil War. 

Underground Railroad activity represents 

a different kind of 19th-century battlefield. 

Like a battlefield, the events that took 

place on this ground and the people who 

participated in them are long gone. Like 

a battlefield, the fight was for freedom 

and the risks were life and death. And, 

like the secret network that the national 

monument commemorates, the history 

here may not be immediately obvious. 

You won’t see Harriet Tubman 

represented here in structures and 

statues; rather, she is memorialized in 

the land, water, and sky of the Eastern 

Shore where she was born and where she 

returned again and again to free others. 

Tubman would easily recognize this 

place. The landscapes and waterways 

that she navigated and used for sanctuary 

on her Underground Railroad missions 

have changed little from her time. 

The national monument boundary 

encompasses an approximately 25,000-

acre mosaic of federal, state, and private 

lands in Dorchester County, Maryland. 

It includes large sections of land that 

are significant to Tubman’s early years 

and evoke her life while enslaved and 

as a conductor on the Underground 

Railroad. The national monument 

includes the following areas. There are 

no national park facilities on these sites:

Stewart’s Canal, dug by hand by free 

and enslaved people between 1810 and 

1832 for commercial transportation. 

Tubman learned important outdoor 

skills working navigating the canal and 

when she worked in nearby timbering 

operations with her father, Ben Ross. 

Stewart’s Canal is part of the Blackwater 

National Wildlife Refuge and, while part 

of the national monument, will continue 

to be owned, operated and managed by 

the US Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Home site of Jacob Jackson, a free 

African American man who received 

a coded letter to help Tubman 

communicate secretly with her family. 

He was a conduit for a message to alert 

her three brothers, Henry, Benjamin, 

and Robert that she would soon come 

to guide their escape from slavery to the 

north. The Jacob Jackson Home Site was 

donated to the National Park Service by 

the Conservation Fund for inclusion in 

the new national monument. 

You can continue your exploration 

on the Harriet Tubman Underground 

Railroad Byway, an All-American Road, 

the highest level of designation for a 

scenic byway in the US. The byway is 

a 125-mile driving tour of more than 

two dozen historic sites and scenic 

vistas associated with Tubman that lie 

both within and outside of the national 

monument. www.harriettubmanbyway.org 

“The difference between us is 

very marked. Most that I have 

done and suffered in the service 

of our cause has been in public, 

and I have received much 

encouragement at every step of 

the way. You, on the other hand, 

have labored in a private way.” 

Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman, Rochester, 

August 29, 1868

Harriet Tubman circa 1885. Historical map of the Chesapeake region of Maryland and the way 

north to freedom. Quote from Sarah Bradford’s 1901 biography on Tubman 

Courtesy of the Ohio Historical Society, Library of Congress

RIGHT Drawing of Harriet Tubman in her Civil War uniform from Sarah Bradford’s 1869 biography of Tubman. 

Tubman served and advised the Union during the Civil War. The Granger Collection, New York
QUOTE Harriet Tubman quoted in Bradford (1971), p. 19.

UPPER LEFT Map showing the distribution of the 

enslaved population in 1860. Library of Congress

LEFT Tubman with family and friends at her New York 

residence around 1887. The Granger Collection, New York

ABOVE Tubman, circa 1912. Library of Congress

On the Edge of Freedom

A New National Park

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National 

Monument is a new national park area with 

limited services. There are no planned national 

park facilities within the monument. It is a park 

in progress and in the coming years, you will see 

services added to the park done in cooperation 

with Maryland’s planned Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park.

For a Safe Visit

Be aware that land within the national monument 

is a mix of federal, state, and privately held land. 

Please respect private property. Mobile phone 

coverage can be unreliable in this area. 

Getting to the Park

Directions to our partners at the Blackwater 

National Wildlife Refuge, about 12 miles south 

of Cambridge, Maryland: from US 50, turn south 

on Route 16. Follow Route 16 to Church Creek 

about 7 miles; turn south on Route 335 (Golden 

Hill Road); follow Route 335 about 4 miles; turn 

east on Key Wallace Drive. The visitor center is 

about 1 mile from the intersection on the right.

GPS: 2145 Key Wallace Drive, Cambridge, Maryland, 21613. Latitude/Longitude: 380 26’/ 76 0 07’ 

More Information

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National 

Monument 

National Park Service

c/o Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

2145 Key Wallace Drive

Cambridge, MD 21613 

(267) 838-2376

www.nps.gov/hatu 

www.nps.gov/ugrr 

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National 

Monument is one of more than 400 units in the 

National Park System. The National Park Service 

preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural 

resources and values of the National Park System 

for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of 

this and future generations. 

Learn more about parks and how the National 

Park Service strengthens American communities: 

www.nps.gov 

Planning Your Visit

“When I found I had crossed that 

line [into freedom in Pennsylvania], I looked at my hands to see 

if I was the same person. There 

was such a glory over everything; 

the sun came like gold through the 

trees, and over the fields, and I 

felt like I was in Heaven.” 

Harriet Tubman

A decade and a half before slavery was 

abolished in the United States and a little 

more than 100 miles from the safety of 

Pennsylvania, Harriet Tubman operated on the edge of freedom. Born in 

Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1822, 

Tubman emancipated herself from 

slavery in 1849 at age 27. She earned the 

nickname “Moses” for risking her own 

life about 13 times to guide more than 70 

people—many of them beloved family 

and friends she had left behind—from 

lives of slavery to new lives of freedom. 

Tubman’s deep Christian faith sustained 

her as she served as a nurse and a spy for 

the Union army. Her knowledge about 

tidal stream areas helped her to lead 

raids along the Combahee River in South 

Carolina, the first woman to lead an 

armed assault during the Civil War. Tubman eventually settled with her extended 

family in Auburn, New York, was active 

in the women’s suffrage movement, 

practiced her faith, and founded a home 

for the elderly and disadvantaged. 

Harriet Tubman 

Underground 

Railroad NM

PHILADELPHIA

ANNAPOLIS

DOVER

BALTIMORE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

RICHMOND

NORFOLK

N.J.

DEL.

MD.

VIRGINIA

PENNSYLVANIA

From wretchedly humble beginnings, 

Harriet Tubman lived her principles and 

achieved fame in her lifetime. Her death 

on March 10, 1913 was reported in the 

New York Times, followed a year later 

by a grand commemoration of her life 

with Booker T. Washington delivering 

the keynote address. Tubman’s story is a 

reminder that civil rights can be fragile, 

but a single person who takes personal 

action to fight for those rights can be an 

inspiration. 

Newspaper advertisement seeking return of Tubman 

and her brothers on October 3, 1849. In it, Tubman is 

referred to by her childhood nickname, “Minty”, short 

for her given name, Araminta Ross. Used by the courtesy 

of James & Susan Meredith and the Bucktown Village Foundation. The Granger Collection, New York.

“I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence 

in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul.” 

Abolitionist Thomas Garrett, describing Tubman