Did you know there is a lost stream buried below the streets of Baltimore? The creek Sumwalt Run vanished from Baltimore’s landscape in the early 1900s. Before its disappearance, its frozen waters appeared in ice boxes across the city, cut from the city’s first commercial ice pond and a later artificial ice factory. Trolley tracks crossed its ravine, bringing workers home from downtown factories. The Olmsted Company attempted to preserve part of the stream as a greenway, but real estate developers filled its valley (using debris from the Great Baltimore Fire of 1905, according to local lore). When Baltimore built a new sewer system in the early 20th century, Sumwalt Run— along with dozens of other creeks across the city — were turned into buried storm sewers. They now flow hidden and mostly forgotten below our neighborhoods. You can catch echoes of their waters whispering from certain storm drains. On July 24, join us and artist Bruce Willen to discover his recent public art project, Ghost Rivers, which reveals the hidden history and path of Sumwalt Run beneath the Remington and Charles Village neighborhoods. Through a series of installations, wayfinding markers, and writings Ghost Rivers brings lost landscapes and histories to the surface for the first time in over 100 years.
Ghost Rivers: A Walking Tour of a Buried Waterways Public Art Project
