Making the Deep Creek-Savage River Lizard Map

Purple Lizard Maps Maryland!

We finished our first Maryland Lizard Map! This map covers a huge chunk of Garrett County, Maryland, including Deep Creek Lake and adjacent parts of West Virginia. This comprehensive map features public lands, boating access, trail systems, and more. Perfect for any outdoor recreation enthusiast!

Maryland was new cartographic territory for us. That means we were out in the field often to introduce ourselves and Purple Lizard to a new audience of land managers, small business owners and locals as we explored the area in and around Deep Creek Lake and Garrett County. We needed to meet with and learn all about the management practices of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the various agencies outdoor recreation rules and regulations, and navigate multiple digital databases as we compiled, refined, field checked, groundtruthed, roadtripped and designed a really beautiful map of this amazing landscape for you to explore. 

After two years of cartographic research and design we signed off on the color proofs!

We've been thinking about making this map for a long time! Ever since we made the Ohiopyle-Laurel Highlands Lizard map, this seemed like a natural extension as it overlaps along the Pennsylvania-Maryland-West Virginia state lines and extends south, almost reaching our Dolly Sods-Seneca Rocks Lizard Map.

Like all Lizard Maps, it is easy to read, printed on waterproof paper, shows you the roads, trails, parks, forests, historic sites, and unlocks a big landscape for exploration! We designed this at a scale of 1:49,830 which is map math for 1 inch = 0.8 mile.

We mapped out a bunch of public land for you!

• Garrett, Potomac, and Savage State Forests
• Big Run, Casselman Bridge, Dans Mountain, Deep Creek Lake, Herrington Manor, New Germany, Sang Run, Swallow Falls, and Wolf Den Run State Parks

You'll find campgrounds, picnic areas, climbing areas, scenic overlooks, historic points, and over 75 reservable and first-come camping sites.

Need some direction in your life? Grab this map and explore:

• Nine State Parks
• Three State Forests
• Deep Creek Lake
• Upper Youghiogheny River
• Savage River and Reservoir
• Jennings Randolph Lake

We explored a lot of dirt roads working on this map!

Towns:

• Accident, McHenry, Oakland, Friendsville, Frostburg, and Grantsville, MD
• Keyser, WV

Perfect For:

• Hikers, bikers, paddlers, adventurers and explorers
• Highlighted trails for hiking, mountain biking, skiing and OHV

Major Trails:

• Big Savage Mountain Hiking Trail
• Shared use mountain bike trails in state parks and forests

Points of Interest:

• Campgrounds, picnic areas, climbing areas, scenic overlooks, historic points, and over 75 reservable and first-come camping sites

Lizards!

• The little purple Lizards you’ll find scattered on the map signify an interesting spot to check out. The Legend says “This Could Mean Anything: cool place, sweet view, local legend”.