You WILL Get Wet On This Ride: Harford’s Last Creek Crossing Still Has A Home On Tabernacle Road
April 22, 2008
Unless you were born and raised in the area, spent some time in the Boy Scouts or like to burn away your weekends cruising the twisting back roads of Harford County, chances are you’ve never heard of Tabernacle Road. It’s really not much of a road - just a winding gravely path through the woods near the Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation - but if you’ve ever tried to traverse it you’re not likely to forget the experience.
Tabernacle Road holds the last public ford in Harford County. That is to say, in order to travel across the county roadway from one end to the other requires crossing a body of open water. Rather than channel the bubbling creek under the roadway or building a bridge over the small waterway, the county has instead allowed Tabernacle Road to plunge right through the meandering flow.
Like the Jericho Covered Bridge in Joppa, the Tabernacle Road ford is a throwback to bygone era and something of a local landmark that you won’t find marked on many maps. It’s also become a rite of passage for many a Harford County high-schooler to test their mettle (and metal too, I suppose) by crossing the ford during periods of high-water - with varying levels of success. But could the ford soon become a distant memory?
