Beaver Dam, Maryland

Beaver Dam is a flooded marble quarry in Cockeysville, MD that has been used as a swimming location since the 1930s. Currently, a 30-acre swim club is located there with two swimming pools, a volleyball court, picnic tables and grills, a creek, and snack house. The 200 foot deep freshwater quarry has floating platforms, two rolling logs, diving and jumping platforms, and a rope swing.[1]

A man jumps into Beaver Dam.
The Beaver Dam Quarry, c. 1898

The quarry began operation in the 19th century and much of the labor was that of Irish immigrants using hand drills, hammers and chisels. In 1878, Hugh Sisson acquired the property and began using the latest equipment available: steam powered derricks, shovels, and diamond bit drills. Stone was loaded onto wagons and pulled by oxen to the nearby Northern Central Railway in Cockeysville until the quarry site itself was connected to the rail in 1866. The dolomitic marble, known to geologists as the Cockeysville Marble, from the quarry was used widely within the eastern United States, including the Washington Monument in Baltimore and the one in Washington, D.C.[2][3]

Beaver Dam has been the site of injuries and drownings, including a prominent incident in 2001.[4]

Notes
  1. McCarthy 2008.
  2. Dam 2011.
  3. McCausland 2008.
  4. Craig 2001.
gollark: ```I can’t even say what’s wrong with PHP, because— okay. Imagine youhave uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff inthere.You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it’s one of those weirdtri-headed things. Okay, well, that’s not very useful to you, butyou guess it comes in handy sometimes.You pull out the hammer, but to your dismay, it has the claw part onboth sides. Still serviceable though, I mean, you can hit nails withthe middle of the head holding it sideways.You pull out the pliers, but they don’t have those serratedsurfaces; it’s flat and smooth. That’s less useful, but it stillturns bolts well enough, so whatever.And on you go. Everything in the box is kind of weird and quirky,but maybe not enough to make it completely worthless. And there’s noclear problem with the set as a whole; it still has all the tools.Now imagine you meet millions of carpenters using this toolbox whotell you “well hey what’s the problem with these tools? They’re allI’ve ever used and they work fine!” And the carpenters show you thehouses they’ve built, where every room is a pentagon and the roof isupside-down. And you knock on the front door and it just collapsesinwards and they all yell at you for breaking their door.That’s what’s wrong with PHP.```From the fractal of bad design article.
gollark: Are you suggesting Assembly is fine for webapps too?
gollark: I don't really believe that.]
gollark: The "wrong"ness of opinions, I guess, depends if your disagreement is based on aesthetic preference differences, or wrong facts/logic.
gollark: Hey, if you think the argument of popularity is fine applied to PHP, I can apply it to opinions.

References
  • Craig, Tim (2001-07-07), "Parents of drowned woman file suit against Beaver Dam", Baltimore Sun, retrieved 2011-06-13
  • Dam, Beaver (2011-06-13), "Beaver dam swimming club", Beaver Dam Swimming Club, archived from the original on 2011-06-02, retrieved 2011-06-13
  • McCarthy, Ellen (2008-07-18), "Beaver Dam Swimming Club Review", The Washington Post, retrieved 2011-06-13
  • McCausland, Christianna (2008-06-13), "Taking the Plunge", Baltimore Style, retrieved 2011-06-13

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.