Walk 16: Pennyfield Lock and Who Slept Here?

We've all seen them: signs over some historic looking inn with the words "Washington (or whoever) slept here." And this is Pennyfield Lock's claim to fame on the C&O Canal.

The Lock House at Pennyfield Lock.

Like Swain's Lock just downstream, Pennyfield Lock got it's name from a family that lived here for a great number of years. In addition to the running the lock, they also ran an inn across the way that was called, well, the Pennyfield Inn.

                                                  Here's a shot of the inn in 1910.                                

There's a couple of interesting things about this shot other than the old car in front of the inn. If you look closely, you can see there are virtually no trees other than a handful of scraggly ones around the inn. Now a days, this area is so densely forested it's a bit difficult to get through it all without a deer path at least to follow. I'm not sure what they used the trees for, but a lot of the area was clear cut around 1900 in massive charcoal producing operations, something I'm thankful are long past.

But so far, I haven't said who was the famous person who used to sleep at the Pennyfield Inn, have I? Well, brace yourself for it and this is earth shattering but it was Grover Cleveland. Yes, that's right Grover Cleveland. It's not much I know, but Grover Cleveland was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. He was elected in 1884 and then was defeated in 1888 only to bounce back in 1892. As luck would have it, the economy crashed in 1893 and that pretty much wrapped up his political career. Even kind hearted historians have trouble making old Grover interesting. One historian said he was honest and had common sense. Imagine that.

Well, one thing is for certain. He spent a fair amount of his presidential time bass fishing on the canal when he wasn't building an election history that would stump trivia players for decades.

Loki was not impressed by the discovery that Cleveland slept at Pennyfield Lock. The dog has common sense.

Once at the lock, you have the choice of upstream or down because there aren't any side trails to the towpath. Loki and I went two miles downstream and got a good look at a section of the canal that had been blasted out of the bluffs.

Rock wall after blasting to make way for the canal
















But we also spotted someone else who sleeps at Pennyfield Lock and sadly this was a homeless person.

The woods between the canal and the Potomac in certain areas of the canal do have places where homeless people sleep. Sometimes when I've been following game trails through the woods, I've stumbled on the sites. They sure aren't hard to miss thanks to all the trash, plastic bottles and other garbage.

The Pennyfield Inn in 2009 when the National Park Service had to tear it down because it had become a safety risk.

Over the last 100 years, we lost our historic inn at Lock 22 but we regained all the forests that had been chopped down. We remember Lock 22 because an obscure president who used to take a break there. No one remembers the Panic of 1893 because we're still reeling from the panic of 2008.

Not that Loki cares. He just wants to cool off in the canal water and fetch a tennis ball.

 What the Park Service needed was a whole lot of these Grover Cleveland $1000 bills. Echoing his presidency, these were issued twice, once in 1928 and once in 1934.



Practical information: Drive out River Road towards Poolesville. Pennyfield Lock road will be on your left, parking lot at the end of the road. Towpath walks either upstream or downstream. I don't know of any variation walks in the area.