Talbot County Highpoint Trip Report

one point northeast of Seth State Forest (80+ ft)

Date: December 27, 2005
Author: Don Desrosiers

This county is locally pronounced "Tall-but" (or "Tall-bt").

The point is easy enough to find from other directions. I parked along Dover Neck Road at the old railroad grade because there were lots of trash trucks and because I wanted to walk along the grade to the point. It was the highest thing around (38° 45' 9.3" N, 76° 1' 50.6" W).

With all of that said, this point presents something of a dilemma. Looking at the lay of the land, I believe this point is manmade. However, I further believe it is manmade out of the original natural HP. When standing on the HP, it is obvious the railroad came through a low, sandy ridge area. Things slope fairly uniformly, both toward Barkers Landing Road and to the southwest.

Considering the construction techniques of the middle to late 1800's and into the early 1900's, the time when most railroads were initially installed, we would expect material removed from the cut to be deposited on either side of the track area in a reasonably uniform manner, typically using a steam shovel. The excess material would have been "smoothed" by a crew of laborers using shovels. This results in a reasonably uniform ridge on either side of the cut. However, in one place there is a distinct higher spot.

This would be due to one of two reasons: either the excess material was not distributed uniformly at that place or the material to be removed was not uniformly distributed at one point (i.e it was the actual HP). The non-uniformity of distribution was probably insufficient to go back and fix it (could have been late in the day), so we are left with this one 80+ ft point. The bottom line is that if this point is NOT the actual HP, it is close enough for our purposes. Or mine, anyway. I'm counting it.