Catoctin Mountain Park
Maryland
Tonight
🌗 46% moon
6.5 h fully dark
Hikes
Easy–Strenuous
🟢 🟡 🔴
Crowds
low
Entrance
Free entry
President Franklin D. Roosevelt created programs to give people a chance to rebuild their lives from the Great Depression. The Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps gave this land a second opportunity and through re-growth, a new role as a recreation area.
Activities
Topics
No entrance fee.
Hours & seasons
Hiking trails and parking areas are open year round, dawn to dusk, but may close as a result of security or safety concerns. Consult the park's website for updates: http://www.nps.gov/cato/index.htm. The visitor center, camps, and campgrounds have separate hours. Please see descriptions for those facilities elsewhere.
Hours are reported by the park — verify before you go.
📞 3016639388
✉ CATO_superintendent@nps.govConditions
Quietest months (fewer crowds): Jan, Feb
Typical crowds: low
Weather now: ☀️ Clear, 82°F
🌦️ 86°/68°
🌧️ 85°/69°
🌦️ 88°/65°
Typical monthly recreation visits · NPS avg 2023–2025 — orange months are the quietest by crowds.
Quietest months
Relative crowds by month — lighter is quieter; ringed months are the calmest by crowds.
Jan
44%
Feb
42%
Mar
58%
Apr
77%
May
82%
Jun
97%
Jul
76%
Aug
83%
Sep
84%
Oct
100%
Nov
57%
Dec
50%
Log a sky reading
Measured the sky with an SQM meter or app? Add your reading (16 = city glow … 22 = pristine). Opt in under “Travelers like you” to share it on the community leaderboard.
Things to do
8-Mile Loop Trail · 8 mi · <p>From Parking Lot at Park Headquarters (off Md. 77) Est. Time</p> <p>0.2 M to Trailhead intersection (moderate incline) 10 minutes</p> <p>1.1 M to Chimney Rock (steep, narrow incline) 35 minutes</p> <p>0.5 M to Wolf Rock (moderate incline) 15 minutes</p> <p>1.2 M to Thurmont Vista (moderate incline) 40 minutes</p> <p>1.2 M to Blue Ridge Summit Vista (moderate decline/incline) 40 minutes</p> <p>0.7 M to Hog Rock (moderate incline) 20 minutes</p> <p>1.0 M to Cunningham Falls (moderate and steep decline) 35 minutes</p> <p>1.2 M to Visitor Center (moderate incline) 40 minutes</p> <p>1.0 M to Trailhead intersection (moderate decline/incline) 30 minutes</p> <p>0.2 M to Parking Lot at Park Headquarters (off Md. 77) 10 minutes</p> <p>Total: 8.3 Miles, 4.5+ Hours</p>
Cabin Camping
Fishing at Lewis Pond
Fly Fishing
🔴 Rock Climbing
Deerfield Nature Trail · 1.3 mi · 1.3 miles
🟢 Brown's Farm Trail · 0.4 miles
Charcoal Exhibit Trail · 0.5 miles
Campgrounds
Adirondack Shelters ↗ · 2 sites
Camp Greentop ↗ · 16 sites · first-come
Camp Misty Mount ↗ · 29 sites
Camp Round Meadow ↗ · 1 sites
Owens Creek Campground ↗ · 50 sites
Visitor centers
Visitor Center
Accessibility
4 accessible campground(s)
70 audio-described place(s)
Reported by the park — verify before you go.
Parking
Camp Round Meadow Parking Lot · 60 accessible spacesaccessibleEV charging
Chestnut Picnic Area Parking Lot · 32 accessible spacesaccessible
Hog Rock Parking Lot · 48 accessible spacesaccessible
Horse Trailer Parking Lot · 4 accessible spaces
Lewis Area Parking · 10 accessible spaces
No Name Parking Lot · 5 accessible spaces
Owens Creek Picnic Area Parking Lot · 34 accessible spaces
Park Headquarters Outer Area Parking · 5 accessible spaces
Sawmill Exhibit Parking Area Lot · 5 accessible spaces
Thurmont Vista/Charcoal Exhibit Parking Lot · 35 accessible spaces
Visitor Center Parking Lots · 62 accessible spacesaccessibleEV charging
Wolf Rock/Chimney Rock Parking Lot · 7 accessible spaces
Not an official safety source — always defer to NPS.gov and rangers for life-safety decisions.
By the numbers
A visual read on Catoctin Mountain Park — its character, trails, sky, and weather.
Park fingerprint
How this park scores across the dimensions travelers care about.
Trail difficulty
Difficulty mix across this park's trails.
Trail profile
Each dot is a trail — distance vs. elevation gain, by difficulty.
3-day forecast
Daily high and low temperatures (°F).
People & stories
Figures tied to Catoctin Mountain Park — each spans a cross-park journey.
Nikita Khrushchev
— Cold War, Cold War History, World War IiWilliam "Wild Bill" Donovan
— WWII, WWII History, SpiesPassport stamps
Mark the stamps you've collected — they show in your memory and along your routes.
🎫 Camp Misty Mount
🎫 Visitor Center
Places to see
Blacksmith's Shop
audio
Blue Blazes Whiskey Still
audio
Blue Blazes: A Fatal Shootout
audio
Blue Blazes: Brook Trout
audio
Blue Blazes: Signs of a Healthy Stream
audio
Blue Blazes: The Discovery
audio
Blue Ridge Summit Overlook
audio
Brown's Farm Trail Stop 10: The Stone Wall
audio
Brown's Farm Trail Stop 11: Food and Shelter
audio
Brown's Farm Trail Stop 12: The Spring
audio
Brown's Farm Trail Stop 2: Wetlands
audio
Brown's Farm Trail Stop 3: The Streambed
audioAudio & media
🎧
🎬
🖼
Learn more
When World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, U.S. intelligence operations were splintered among nearly a dozen federal agencies.
Discover the innovative and exciting programs of the recipients of the national and regional 2011 Freeman Tilden Awards for excellence in interpretation.
More than 200,000 volunteers provide invaluable time and energy to the National Park Service. Meet the people and groups being honored with a 2013 Hartzog Award.
Meet the recipients of the 2015 Freeman Tilden Awards, the highest National Park Service honor for interpretation, and learn more about their exciting programs.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … Environman? While it may sound like a Saturday morning superhero, Environman was a National Park Service (NPS) symbol for its environmental education activities in the 1970s. Beginning in 1967 the NPS became a leader in environmental conservation education, which then-Director George B. Hartzog, Jr saw as crucial to the survival of the parks and the planet. Many of those key ideas echo in today’s NPS climate change education.
What if your office were the woods? Your break room a mossy log? This is the reality for members of the Inventory & Monitoring forest vegetation crew. The team has collected data on forest health in NCR parks every year since 2006 and recently completed the fourth cycle of forest vegetation monitoring (2018-2022). Learn what staff biologists and technicians have to say about their experiences in the field these past five years.
With the onset of World War II, the OSS's secret operations—espionage, counter-intelligence, disinformation, and guerrilla leadership—expanded.
From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Catoctin Mountain Park managed two programs that provided African American youths from the Washington, D.C. metro area with opportunities for outdoor recreation and education through the Summer in the Parks program (1968–1976) and the DC Environmental Outdoor Laboratory (1970–1975).
Ranger School
Park-grounded courses you can learn with the Ranger.
The Blacksmith in Society Lesson Plan #5 - Revitalizing the Spirit
Open →
The Blacksmith in Society Lesson Plan #5 - Revitalizing the Spirit
Open →
The Blacksmith in Society: Lesson 1- Economic Incentives for Industrial Development
Open →
The Blacksmith in Society: Lesson 4 - The Price of Freedom
Open →
The Blacksmith in Society: Lesson 4 - The Price of Freedom Grades 6-8
Open →
How Catoctin Mountain Park connects
This park's activities, topics, location, and on-the-ground places — one hop in the graph. Drag to explore; click an activity, topic, or related park to follow it.
Park
Activity
Topic
State
Campground
VisitorCenter
PassportStamp
ParkingLot
Trail
ThingToDo
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