Cumberland's Railway Gateway

The handsome brick building at the foot of Cumberland's hill opened in nineteen thirteen as the Western Maryland Railway's passenger terminal, designed by Baltimore architect C. M. Anderson on a filled basin at the old terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.

The first trains departed June fifteenth that year, running all the way through to Chicago on services called the Chicago Limited and the Baltimore Limited. Passenger service ended in nineteen fifty-nine, but the building stood and was eventually restored. Today it anchors a heritage complex where the Great Allegheny Passage trail begins its one-hundred-fifty-mile run to Pittsburgh, and the C and O Canal towpath picks up for the final leg to Washington.