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Event Calendar

Annual Wade in and Joe Stewart's Swim May 18 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM Rocky Point Park Joe will swim across mouth of Patapsco to raise awareness of water quality issues. For directions call 410-887-3873 Gwynns Falls Trail Celebration June 07 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM I-70 Park and Ride and Winans Meadow Celebrate opening of GF Trail from Leakin Park to I-70 Park and Ride. We will have fly fishing and on water quality sampling demonstrations. Stonybrook stream cleanup June 17 10:00 AM - 12:00 AM 8737 Meadow Heights Rd. Randallstown, Md. Join the Stonybrook Community Association and the GFWA to help clean trash from the Scotts Level Branch. Beyond the Boardwalk June 21, 10:00 AM - June 22, 3:00 PM In front of the Nat. Aquarium in Baltimore National Aquarium in Baltimore will be hosting our “Beyond the Boardwalk” on the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Waterfront Park. This event is designed to let folks know how their actions (in their own backyard) can affect Ocean/Bay health. In addition, there will be live music, sand sculpture contest and family crafts.

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Early settlers to the Gwynns Falls region found a landscape dominated by forests, which they cut for timber and fuelwood, and later cleared for agriculture. By the mid-1700s, settlers had cleared 20% to 30% of the forested land in the mid-Atlantic region. By the mid-1800s, as much as 50% of the land had been cleared for agriculture, primarily grain and tobacco crops. The Gwynns Falls was further developed to take advantage of its water power potential. By 1900, more than two million people inhabited the Baltimore-Washington-Annapolis region and only about 30% of the Gwynns Falls Watershed remained under forest cover.

By 1990, approximately 8.5 million people lived in the Baltimore-Washington-Annapolis metropolitan area, which has become the fourth largest urban center in the Nation behind Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Land use in the region had shifted from agriculture to residential and commercial development, especially in places like the Gwynns Falls Watershed. Today, the watershed is home to more than 246,000 people.