The story
Daniels was a textile-mill town strung along the Patapsco River between Baltimore and Howard counties, and it changed its name every time it changed owners. The settlement began around 1810 as Elysville, when the Ely family built a mill on the river; the Gary family bought it in 1853 and renamed it Alberton; and in 1940 the C.R. Daniels Company took over the mill and the town and made it Daniels.
It was a company town to the end. About ninety families lived in Daniels in the late 1960s, renting from the company, when C.R. Daniels announced it would close all the housing and clear the residents out. The evictions were nearly complete when Tropical Storm Agnes swept up the Patapsco Valley in June 1972 and flooded what was left, destroying most of the emptied buildings and settling the town's fate.
The river valley is now part of Patapsco Valley State Park, and Daniels is a walk-in ruin. The stone St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic church and a stone Methodist church still stand, along with mill foundations, retaining walls, and the traces of streets, on trails popular with hikers who mostly don't realize a town of hundreds once lived here.
What remains today
The stone Catholic and Methodist churches, mill ruins and foundations, and street traces along the Patapsco in Patapsco Valley State Park.
Questions from the field
- What destroyed Daniels, Maryland?
- Its owner, the C.R. Daniels Company, evicted residents and closed the town's housing around 1968; Tropical Storm Agnes then flooded the Patapsco Valley in 1972 and destroyed most of the remaining buildings.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
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Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 584014
- — Maryland DNR — Patapsco Valley State Park
- — Patapsco Heritage Greenway — Daniels