The Wild Yough Turns 50 and Friendsville Is Throwing a Party July 25
Friendsville Town Park hosts a free celebration July 25 marking 50 years of the Youghiogheny as Maryland's only wild and scenic river, with music, food, and the Upper Yough Race.
Fifty years ago, Maryland looked at the Youghiogheny River and decided some places are worth leaving alone. On Saturday, July 25, Friendsville celebrates that decision with a free community party at the Town Park from 5 to 10 pm.
The Wild Yough is the only river in Maryland’s nine-river Scenic and Wild Rivers system to carry the wild designation, reserved for a free-flowing river whose shoreline stays undeveloped and essentially primitive for at least four miles. In practice that means 21 miles of green forest buffering some of the most famous whitewater in the country, including the Top Yough at Swallow Falls and the Upper Yough run from Sang Run to Friendsville. It was not always a sure thing. Timbering, mining, hydroelectric proposals, and development all threatened the river early in the last century before landowners and local and state government hammered out the protections we enjoy today.
The celebration lines up with the 46th Upper Yough Race, which brings up to 100 top-level paddlers to town to thread the rapids. Race awards will be presented at the park between 7 and 8 pm. Before that, Aurora Celtic takes the stage from 5 to 7 pm with food vendors on site for an evening picnic. After the awards, the music keeps rolling with two-time race winner Jesse Shimrock, singing lawyer Dirk Schwenk, and Nick Savage performing his river tribute song, with a local band closing out the night.
Local volunteers Madi Mori, Steve Storck, and Jesse Whittimore led the planning, and any proceeds go to the Mountain Watershed Association, home of the Yough Riverkeeper. For those of us upstream in Confluence, it is the same river and the same story: one watershed, well loved.
Source: Deep Creek Times, from Steve Storck’s writeup in the Town of Friendsville July newsletter.