Ask around Frederick County right now about Cunningham Falls State Park and you'll get one of two answers. Either "isn't that place still closed?" or a shrug, because the person asking hasn't been paying attention since the story dropped off the local news feed in August. Both answers are a little wrong, and the gap between them says something useful about how to actually plan a fall hike this year.
Here's what happened. On July 26, a beaver-related incident occurred at Hunting Creek Lake, the 43-acre lake inside Cunningham Falls State Park near Thurmont. The beaver was caught, euthanized, and tested positive for rabies the next day. Ten days later, on August 5, another beaver-related incident occurred in the same general area. That beaver tested positive too, making it the second confirmed rabid beaver at that one park within two weeks. Statewide, the last confirmed instances of a rabid beaver biting someone had occurred back in 2021 and 2015, which is what made two cases at the same lake in the same two-week stretch stand out.
The Maryland Park Service responded by closing the Houck Day Use Area, the boat ramp, and Big Hunting Creek above the lake. Swimming, fishing, boating, and all water access were off limits while wildlife biologists ran thermal surveys after dark, checked trail cameras, and trapped the area to confirm no more rabid animals were around. On August 24, the park reopened water access, with officials stating plainly that monitoring had turned up no evidence of rabid beavers remaining in the area.
Notice what's missing from that list. Camping. Hiking. The trails themselves. National coverage of the story, and there was a lot of it, tended to describe the closure in park-wide terms, understandably, since "rabid beaver attacks force Maryland park closure" is a better headline than "swimming area closed, trails stay open." But the actual scope, confirmed at the time by a DNR spokesperson, was narrower: other areas of the park remained open for camping and hiking throughout. If you skipped a hike at Cunningham Falls this August because you assumed the whole park was shut, you skipped it for no reason.
That mismatch between what the story sounded like and what was actually true on the ground is worth sitting with for a second, because it points to something bigger than one summer's beaver problem. Cunningham Falls' identity in most people's heads is the lake and the beach. That's fair. It's the swimming and boating side of the park that draws the biggest weekend crowds and, this year, the side that closed. But the park's other half, the hiking half, with its 78-foot waterfall, the tallest cascading falls in Maryland, and its trail network through hemlock forest, never stopped being available. The closure exposed how much of the park's reputation rides on the water feature specifically, which is a strange thing to realize about a place named after a waterfall.
The Better Fall Trip Nobody Plans
Six miles from downtown Frederick, on the same Catoctin Mountain ridge, sits Gambrill State Park. It never closed for anything this year. It's also, quietly, the better fall hiking option of the two parks, and almost nobody treats it that way.
Gambrill is split into two sections, Rock Run and High Knob, with more than 16 miles of trails between them. The options range widely enough that you can match the hike to the actual afternoon you have, not just the one you wish you had:
- White Oak Trail, a 1-mile easy loop through mature hardwood forest, hikers only, no bikes. Good for a lunch-break walk or bringing along someone who doesn't want a workout.
- Red Maple Trail, 1.1 miles connecting the campground to the rest of the park, maintained by The Trail House, an outdoor gear shop in Frederick.
- Green Ash Trail, a steeper 2-mile route with little level ground, maintained by Wheel Base, a Frederick bike shop, and better suited to hikers who want their legs to know they did something.
- Black Locust Trail, 3 miles, climbing toward the High Knob area with views east toward Frederick and west into Middletown Valley.
- Yellow Poplar Trail, the longest at 7 miles, moderate difficulty, running out along the ridge to the North Frederick Overlook.
The fact that two Frederick businesses have informally adopted specific segments of this trail system is a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that tells you this park functions as a piece of the community's actual life, not just a line on a map. High Knob itself sits around 1,600 feet, the park's high point, and its stone overlook, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s along with the rest of the park's stonework and the still-standing Tea Room, is the most photographed view in the park for good reason.
None of this closed in August. None of it required a health department press release. It was just sitting there the whole time, mostly overlooked in favor of a lake six miles away that spent three weeks off limits.
One Ridge, Two Trailheads
Here's the part that actually changes how you should plan the day. Gambrill and Cunningham Falls aren't really two separate destinations. They're two ends of the same trail. The Catoctin Trail, a rugged 27-to-28-mile blue-blazed route, runs from Gambrill State Park north through the Frederick City Watershed, through Cunningham Falls State Park, and into Catoctin Mountain Park, ending near Owens Creek Campground, close enough to the Appalachian Trail that you could keep walking if you wanted to.
Nobody hikes the whole thing in a day, and you don't need to. But it means the choice between "Gambrill or Cunningham Falls" is a false one. With Cunningham Falls' water access reopened, an actual fall Saturday could reasonably include a short overlook hike at Gambrill in the morning, since High Knob and Black Locust don't take long, followed by the walk to the falls at Cunningham Falls in the afternoon, all on the same mountain, thirty minutes apart by car.
Timing It Right
Elevation matters more than most people account for when they're guessing at peak color. Trees higher up the Catoctin ridge, where Gambrill's High Knob sits, tend to turn before the valley floor in downtown Frederick does, simply because it's cooler up there sooner. That's a real, useful piece of local knowledge if you're trying to time a hike to actual color rather than an average date pulled from a national map.
On the broader forecast, the Farmers' Almanac's 2026 fall foliage outlook placed the wider Mid-Atlantic region, which takes in Frederick County, in its "good" foliage category for the year, one step below the standout central Appalachian zone further west but still ahead of regions expected to see duller color. AccuWeather's 2026 outlook added a wrinkle worth knowing locally: senior meteorologist Paul Pastelok said the contrast between central and northern Pennsylvania and the more southeastern stretch of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia could be sharp this year, which lines up with the elevation effect on the Catoctin ridge itself. Nothing about foliage timing is exact, and both forecasts note that late-summer and early-fall weather can still shift things. But the ingredients for a decent year on this particular ridge are there.
Before You Go
A few practical notes worth knowing before you head up the mountain. Gambrill charges a day-use fee of $3 per vehicle for Maryland residents and $5 for out-of-state visitors, and as of late August the park added a QR-code payment option at the entrance, letting visitors pay by card on their phone instead of relying on the old cash honor box. Park hours run 8 a.m. to sunset from April through October, shifting to 10 a.m. to sunset in the colder months. Cunningham Falls' hiking trails and camping areas are open and unaffected by the summer's water closure, which has now fully lifted.
If you've lived in Frederick County long enough to have a favorite trailhead already, this is worth filing away regardless. The mountain didn't lose anything this summer. It just took a few weeks for the rest of us to notice that half of it never closed in the first place.
For more on what's changing around Frederick County this season, including new openings along Urbana Pike and Carroll Creek, take a look at our Frederick County neighborhood guide.
If a season of hiking the Catoctin ridge has you thinking about what your own place near it might be worth, Travis Fogle and the Coastal Realm Northeast team can walk you through a same-day valuation whenever you're ready to look.
