Historical Society

The Garrett County Historical Society is dedicated to preserving the history of Garrett County, its customs and traditions. Located in the Garrett County Historical Museum at 107 South Second Street, Oakland, MD, (phone 301-334-3226) you will find histories of Garrett County through pictures of the area, family genealogies, Garrett County records such as birth records, death records, county cemetery records, early newspapers and much more. Enjoy time spent talking to others who have varied interest in subjects associated to Garrett County and Western Maryland.

Glades Star

The Glades Star is the quarterly publication of the Society and your membership entitles you to a subscription. Intersesting exclusive articles, special views of artifacts and images from our archives and the latest news and announcements from the Society are in every issue. 

As a service to the research community, we have compiled a comprehnive index for Volumes 1-13 of the Glades Star.

Spreadsheet Version (sortable tabular data)     Printable version (in pdf format set up to print on standard paper)

 We have also partnered with the Ruth Enlow Library to create an online, searchable archive of the Glades Star.  You can access the Glade Star Archive here  

Additional Content

We have begun an initative to provide additional content to expand on our traditional museum exhibits.

• 1959 Garrett County Bus Tragedy : video interviews of those involved with the bus accident recorded in 2017
• Oakland Walking Tours: a series of 5 short (4 to 6 stop) walking tours of Oakland, each with a different theme
• Kitzmiller Walking Tour: an interative Google map and descirptions of the locations along the tour
• Buzz 14 Brochure: On January 13, 1964 a B-52 aircraft loaded with two nuclear weapons crashed in Garrett County.  This brochure tells the tale and outlines a tour of sites related to this event
• Meshach Browning, “Father of Garrett County”: This brochure has a brief overview of Meshach Browning, with a map of Garrett County showing sites noted in his book.
• Video tours: online tours of both the Transportation and Garrett County History Musuems narrated by Past President and local history guru Bob Boal.
• Virtual Map Room: scanned paper maps of Garrett County and the local area of historical interest
• Postcards from Garrett County: Digitized collection of 77 postcards from local historian Al Feldstien’s collection
• Maryland’s Garrett County Graves: In a joint effort of the Youghiogheny Glades Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution; the Ruth Enlow Library and the GCHS, we have digitized both volumes of this indispensable resource.  These books list all of the cemeteries and graves in Garrett (as of the publication date)
• Brown’s miscellaneous writings upon a great variety of subjects : prepared and written from 1880 to 1895 by Jacob Brown.
• The Hoyes of Maryland, by Captain Charles E. Hoye.