The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1932-07-14

are 10 De 1OuHu heavier FENCES, DackeO
by two-by-four timbers. These,
slanted in the fields on either side of
the road, serve to bank drifting snow
before it reaches the right of way.
Rotary snow plows are called into
action as soon as heavy snow starts,
so that seldom are the roads closed.
But when the wind sweeps across the
mountains there are heavy drifts and
the cold usually provides a solid mass
on which shedding and skiing really
ought to be difficult to avoid, consid-
ering the hills in the neighborhood.
For although the greater part of Gar
rett county is tilted in one direction
or another, and the mountains and
many of the larger hills are timber
covered, there is great deal of
cleared pasture and farm land. To
the man unaccustomed to what
Garrett countian shifts at as small
hill, it is hard enough to stand still
on most of this cleared land even if it
is knee-deep in daisies or clover. Such
a thing as avoiding coasting when
there is snow on the ground would
seem impossible.
Swallow Falls and Muddy Creek
Falls provide an additional spectac-
ular sight, if one tires of rolling
mountains and the expanse of the
lake. Muddy Creeks cascade is much
more imposing than that at Swallow
Falls, but the latter holds special
lure for the trout fisherman, and with
in the last few years it's waters pro-
vided some thrills for a group of most
distinguished and inveterate campers
in the country. Harvey F. Firestone,
Henry Ford and the late Thomas A.
Edison made their temporary home
on the bank nearby, to the everlast-
ing qualification Of their neighbors.
The town of Oakland itself, with its
1000 inhabitants and its feeling of
pasernalism toward the great lake,
has been doing good deal to aid the
development of facilities that might
draw more people to it's neighborhood.
A significant point from the geo.
graphical angle, of course, is that
Garrett county, bound. to Maryland
only by a slender strip of soil across
the mountains, has much more in COM
mon with West Virginia and Pennsyl-
vania than with it's own State. Just
as the Chesapeake Bay does much to
provide natural dividing line for the
Eastern Shore from the Western, so
do the Alleghenies set Garrett county
as something of land apart.
The county is member of the Allie
gheny Tableland Association, COM
posed otherwise of two counties in
West Virginia and two in Pennsylva-
MIA. They are all in that portion of
the Allegheny plateau which begins at
the eastern face Of the Alleghenies
and slips westward to the Laurel
Mountains to the west of Garrett
county. In that area problems are
largely identical. The land is the
same and the association consequently
is close. Even so, cooperation with
the State Conservation Commission in
efforts to strengthen the ties between
Maryland's westernmost county and
other divisions of the State is being
emphasized.
Oakland, like many smaller towns,
is strong in civic enterprise, and its
community spirit is more marked than
in many cities of it's size. Mayor
Grover C. Stemple probably is proud
est of the towns volunteer fire de-
partment, which boasts first-class
pumping equipment-although the
Oakland reservoir stands outside the
town on hill high enough to give
gravity flow sufficient to fling water
over any structure in the vicinity.
1t probably is unique in having
waiting list. Oakland Post of the
American Legion has a fifty-piece
drum and bugle corps and juvenile
group of fifty-four, which is rather
startling for a community so small.
Most of the towns social and sports
activities touch rather strongly on