Garrett Trails advocates for the development of trails that serve people of all abilities
We are rebuilding our page! Please check back for updated trail descriptions throughout October!
Saturday, October 3, 2026, New Germany State Park Trail Work Morning
Hope you can join us for Friends of New Germany State Park (FONG) and Garrett Trails Work Day:
What: FONG and Garrett Trails volunteers, along with New Germany State Park staff, will be restoring drainage ditches on park trails. FONG will provide lunch (food and drinks) at the conclusion of this annual volunteer event.
When: Saturday, October 3rd, from 9am-noon, with lunch to follow.
Where: Meet at 9am in the parking lot for the trailhead of the Savage River State Forest Poplar Lick Hiking Trail. You can find it on Google Maps by searching for GPS coordinates (39.6181, -79.1499) or searching for "Poplar Lick Hiking Trail".
Fork Run Recreation Area Draft Master Plan Feedback Portal Open Until 10/15/26
“The Draft Fork Run Recreation Area Master Plan provides an overall vision for the future of the recreation area, including recommendations for trail rehabilitation, trail realignments and connections, infrastructure improvements, access, user experience, and long-term maintenance. The plan is intended to serve as a planning and implementation framework, rather than a commitment to construct every recommendation at once. Individual projects will move forward as funding, permitting, design, environmental review, and other implementation requirements allow.” - Garrett County Government Website
Garrett Trails has been helping the County government with land management responsibilities at the Fork Run Recreation Area since it’s initial development. As Fork Run has become an increasingly popular and well-used trail system we asked the County in 2020, to consider developing a master plan that help make the trails even more sustainable while protecting the outdoor and ecological experiences available to residents and visitors.
2025 Garrett Trails Trail Counter Report
The Garrett Trails Trail Counter Program (TCP) is described in this report. The program is intended to provide objective data on recreational trail usage to stakeholders in Garrett County. The TCP started with a 2017 grant from the Garrett County Health Department and significantly expanded after a 2021 grant from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority. The TCP is aligned with Garrett Trails’ mission to develop and maintain sustainable trails for use by the citizens of Garrett County and others, as trail use data can help in demonstrating the impact of its activities and also help to provide support for funding new activities.
This report details the purpose of the TCP and its operational milestones over the last 8 years. The trail counter technology and considerations taken in deploying and using the automated trail counters are described. Survey methodology developed as part of the TCP is also described. More than 16,600 days of data spanning almost 400,000 hours of observations have been collected from deployed trail counters in the TCP.