The Gwynns Falls Trail runs fifteen miles from Interstate 70 through Franklintown and the Gwynns Falls valley to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Near Dead Run, it follows the historic Franklin Turnpike for a few blocks and enters the Franklintown Historic District. East in Leakin Park at Winans Meadow, it passes through a mature Piedmont hardwood forest, crosses Dead Run, and goes by a mid-1800s iron waterwheel that pumped water from Dead Run to Thomas de Kay Winan’s former Crimea estate on the ridge. Franklintown was one of Baltimore’s first planned communities, where John H. Piel operated a grocery and livestock feed store. Dead Run flows into the Gwynns Falls and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. In 1969, plans envisioned Interstate 70 continuing through Gwynns Falls and Leakin Parks, tunneling under the historic Crimea estate and adding active recreation facilities to compensate for the highway, but community residents fought to preserve the parks’ natural character, and Interstate 70 ends at the park boundary.
