Customer Reviews

The Patapsco: Baltimore's River of History

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I got interested in the Patapsco River when I went to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I knew about the general history of the B & O railroad in the Patapsco Valley, but this book opened up an entire new window on the history of the Patapsco Valley. Travers' prose makes the history of the Patapsco Valley easily accessible to everyone and the geographic organization of his book makes it useful as a guidebook too.

Having grown up on the Patapsco River, fishing and crabbing it's lower waters in the summertime and ice skating it's upper reaches in the winter, I bought this book and looked forward to a wonderful history.

What I found was a series of (at best) essay's containing basically the same information over and over again disquised as chapters.

Each essay (read "Chapter") was a jumble of timelines that took you through the late 1600's through the early 1900's containing stories of the same events, places and characters or their siblings in different order.

I perseverved through 3/4's of this tomb on my beloved River and finally left it lying in rapt disappointment. I perfer to remember it's History as told by my father and his and remember my experiences during it's worst era (mid 20th century) through it's struggle to become reborn today.

If you are considering this book, I recommend you take the drive through Patapsco State Park along the "Old River" on Sunday instead.