Tuckahoe Creek, Maryland

As of September 4, 2008 at 7:00 AM
Steps: 4,815,640
Miles: 2024.55
Miles to Canada: 11.45

Tuckahoe State Park is named after the Tuckahoe Creek, a quiet country stream bordered for most of its length by wooded marshlands, runs through the length of the park. Over the holiday weekend, I got to walk for several hours along the creek walking from one end to the other of the park.

The Tuckahoe is a tributary of the Choptank River on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Upstream of of the small town of Hillsboro, it forms the boundary between Caroline County and Queen Anne's County, passing through Tuckahoe State Park and dividing the small towns of Queen Anne and Hillsboro. Downstream of Hillsboro, it forms the boundary between Caroline County and Talbot County, before flowing into the Choptank River about 20 miles upstream from Suicide Bridge.

Two miles south of the towns of Queen Anne and Hillsboro, east of where Tapper's Corner Road ends (you got to love the name of that road) at Lewistown Road, a creek flows into the Tuckahoe at the birthplace of Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer.



The creek was pretty high and full of slow moving water - the weather was absolutely perfect.



You can rent a kayak and go up and down the creek - or walk along the trail that runs beside it.

Map of the park

The name Tuckahoe is a curious one. There are a number of Tuckahoe's on the east coast, with one in Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and in Virginia for starters. The Tuckahoe in New Jersey is not far from the sea shore and Atlantic City and the one in New York is just north of New York City. These Tuckahoe's names are of Algonquin (native american indian) origin; it is a corruption of the Algonquin word ptuckweoo, a descriptive adjective meaning "it is round", now thought to be a mushroom, fungus or a vegetative, bread-like substance that was found at the base of trees and used as food. To me, the it sounds like it ought to go well with Squirrel.

The name Tuckahoe as found in Maryland and Virginia, however, has a different origin. A Tuckahoe was a member of the aristocratic and politically powerful class of plantation owners in tidewater Virginia in the mid-18th century (i.e., the "first families of Virginia"); later it became a derogative word and came to mean anyone from low-country Virginia who was lazy, aristocratic, ineffectual, prideful, and/ or effete. Mr. Douglass would most likely have been offended to hear the term.