Campsite 60

The tallest ground on this site's horizon stands 8.3° above level, to the north.

On the March equinox direct sun reaches the pitch at 7:20 am and leaves it at 7:24 pm: 12 h 6 m of it, against 12 h 12 m of daylight on an open horizon.

The Potomac here was a border, with the canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad running along it. In the winter of 1862, according to the Morgan County historical society, Brigadier General Frederick W. Lander held the river line with about 16,000 Union troops quartered at Camp Chase near Paw Paw; Lander died there of pneumonia on 2 March 1862. On 4 October 1862 Confederate troops under John Imboden attacked Company K of the 54th Pennsylvania at the mouth of the Little Cacapon, and their cavalry captured Company B, camped about 500 yards from the Paw Paw Tunnel. In June 1863 raiders under Lieutenant Colonel Elijah White cut the canal just below Lock 67 and between Locks 71 and 72. In the summer of 1864 raiders captured 14 canal boats near Lock 68, most of them loaded with coal, and set them on fire, with the pivot bridge over the lock. Union troops stationed at Little Orleans are said to have used Point Lookout and the nearby ridges to watch the canal, the railroad and the river crossings, and DNR gives that as the likely origin of the overlook's name. In Flintstone, Confederate troops looted the Wilson family's store, which still stood on Old Route 40 when it was surveyed. On 2 August 1864, at the forest's southwest edge, Confederate cavalry under Brigadier General John McCausland, retreating after burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, reached the river at Oldtown. Colonel Israel Stough held the crossing with part of the 153rd Ohio, a blockhouse and an iron-clad train. A Confederate gun put a shot through the train's boiler, and Stough, outnumbered, surrendered on condition that his men be paroled at once. In his report, General Kelley gave Confederate losses of 20 to 25 killed and 40 to 50 wounded, and Union losses of 2 killed and 3 wounded.

Point Lookout stands above a loop of the Potomac at the forest's southeast edge. Its name probably dates from the Civil War, when Union troops stationed at Little Orleans are said to have used the point as an observation and signal post over the canal, the railroad and the river crossing. The Merten family's orchard promotion later praised the view, but no source found for this guide places a company building here. In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps built the stone overlook wall and the roofed log picnic table that are still there. From the overlook you can see 243 acres George Washington once owned; in the 1840s the loop below was called General Washington's Horseshoe Bend. DNR gives the height as 900 feet above sea level with the river 300 feet below; a 1979 state survey put the point about 500 feet above the river. Some of the red cedars on the old shale barren below are up to 350 years old, older than the orchard by two centuries. The Baltimore Sun reported in 1994 that scenes for the film Gettysburg were shot here.