This past weekend, my wife and I hit the road on a day trip to explore Douglas Point–an unexpected treasure that you likely won’t find in your DC guidebooks.

After scarfing down some delicious local BBQ at George’s BBQ in Indian Head, we arrived to dense mixed forests cloaked in brilliant autumn colors. Despite this beauty, we pretty much had the area to ourselves. Although we were within a 75-mile radius of DC, I could set a tripod in the middle of the road for ten minutes without a passing car. The colors alone are worth the trip, but the real hidden gem is Mallows Bay.

Mallows Bay is a small bay on the Maryland side of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland. It is a unique recreation area resulting, in part, from abandonment and maligned plans. It is regarded as the largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere and is described by many as a “ghost fleet”. How did this come to be in the Potomac? More than 100 of the vessels are wooden steamships, part of a fleet built to cross the Atlantic during World War I. However, most of these ships were obsolete upon completion since the war had ended. The US Government sent these vessels to Mallows Bay to be destroyed–and today the bay has evolved into a beautiful recreation area where visitors can tour the remains by walking the shoreline (like we did) or by paddling around the ship graveyard. We will be back with kayaks one day!

Douglas Point, a US Bureau of Land Management site, sits along a quiet road and sports beautiful mixed hardwood and pine forests–a rarity in the DMV region.

We then headed to the Douglas Point Recreation Area, managed by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Although BLM is the largest landholder in the western United States, this is one of only a few sites on the east coast so it was certainly an unusual discovery in Maryland! Originally slated to become a nuclear power plant, public outcry resulted in the local electrical utility abandoning its plan, and eventually in the land’s public acquisition. The recreation area exceeded expectations. In the same afternoon, we toured the ruins of a 17^th century home and walked the sandy Potomac shore in search of fossilized sharks teeth dating back 58 million years (we found one!). Given the beauty of this site, I’m glad that it is now protected from further development.