BALTIMORE COUNTY. 



Baltimore County is in the north-central portion of the State, ad- 

 jacent to Baltimore City, and extends northward to Pennsylvania. 

 The Gunpowder River and the Little Gunpowder form three-fourth's 

 of the county's eastern boundary, the Patapsco the southern and half 

 of the western boundaries. With the exception of a small portion of 

 the southeastern part, which lies in the Coastal Plain Division, the 

 county is in the Piedmont Plateau. That portion in the Coastal Plain 

 is somewhat flat, generally sandy as to soil, and in other ways charac- 

 teristic of the tidewater regions; while the remainder of the county 

 consists of rolling land gradually inci-easing in elevation toward the 

 north. Nearly all is well adapted to dairying and general farming, 

 and while most of the county is veiy suitable for agriculture, there 

 are certain rich, extensive valleys which constitute especially the prin- 

 cipal farming centers — the Green Spring, Dulaney, Worthington, and 

 Long Green Valleys being the most important of these. 



The Forests. 



Of the county's total land area, 24 per cent is woodland, and with 

 the exception of the farming valleys named above the forests are quite 

 evenly distributed. There are few extensive wooded areas, the forests 

 being principally confined to woodlots which vary from 10 to 100 acres 

 in extent. The value of the land for farming purposes precludes the 

 use of most of it for forest, and large continuous bodies of woodland 

 are rare except in the lower eastern section of the county. Here, ad- 

 jacent to Back and Middle Rivers, and the Gunpowder, occur con- 

 siderable areas of hardwood forests, together with smaller tracts of 

 mixed hardwoods and pine. The few pure stands of scrub pine, the 

 only conifer common to the county, are found here also, and as a 

 whole the tidewater section is weU forested. 



While there is little pine timber in Baltimore County, there is 

 much valuable hardwood growth — white, red, scarlet, and black oaks, 

 tulip poplar, hickory, chestnut, ash, and black walnut. In northern 

 Baltimore county the forests are largely of chestnut, and here, since 

 its beginning in Maryland, the blight has made serious inroads. Hard- 

 woods constitute 96 per cent of the whole wooded area, pure pine 1 



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