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Tonoloway Creek
Tributary
This 31-mile stream starts in Pennsylvania and enters the Potomac River at Hancock, Maryland. There is a USGS monitoring station on the creek .4 miles upstream from the confluence with the Potomac.
Tonoloway Creek flows from the ridges of Fulton County, Pennsylvania into Western Maryland at Hancock, has a history shaped by early frontier settlement and later by the engineering demands of the C&O Canal. Colonial families established farms along its fertile valley as early as the 1730s, forming what became known as the Tonoloways Settlement, a small but significant backcountry community straddling the shifting Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary. In the 1830s, the creek gained new prominence when limestone quarried from its banks was used to build the Tonoloway Aqueduct, completed in 1839 to carry canal boats across the stream on their way upriver. Ecologically, Tonoloway Creek drains a largely rural watershed of forest and farmland, supporting typical Ridge-and-Valley aquatic life and feeding the Potomac with cool, relatively clean water. Its tributaries?including Little Tonoloway Creek?add to a network of small streams that sustain fish, amphibians, and riparian wildlife along one of Washington County's quieter waterways.
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Contact Information
Maryland Department of Natural Resources
580 Taylor Ave.
Annapolis MD 21401
877-620-8DNR
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