Hikers come to Cromwell Valley Park’s kilns for the history and stay for the birds

From his perch at the top of the lime kilns at Cromwell Valley Park, Jim Kelly can hear one busy interchange for cars and another one for birds.

The kilns are at the nexus of several habitats at the 460-acre park just off Interstate 695 in Towson. Forest birds — including seven species of woodpeckers — perch in the black walnut and sycamore trees around the kilns, and field birds — red-winged blackbirds and eastern bluebirds — flock to the meadow beside them. Barn swallows have been known to nest inside the kilns; great blue herons enjoy the stream a couple hundred feet away.

Kelly, 89, never imagined when he embarked on a project to stabilize the crumbling lime kilns a decade ago that they would become a draw for birds — or for the fox kits that showed up a few years ago and enthralled photographers with their playful antics. But now, as the popular county park embarks on a major construction project to widen its roads and make its trails more accessible, he’s pleased that the project has all kinds of admirers.

“I’m very proud of it,” Kelly said. “I love that when people are here, they walk down the trail, enjoying their hike, and then they hit this place and say, ‘Wow, look at this castle.’”

The castle-shaped brick structures stand out in the park, but they wouldn’t have been unusual 300 years ago. Back then, the Baltimore County valley was a bustling agricultural and industrial area. The Hampton plantation was a short carriage ride away.

The valley supplied marble from a rock formation called the Loch Raven schist that undergirded the entire valley. Cockeysville became famous for this marble; it’s what helped build the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.

Cooked marble becomes lime. Throughout America’s industrialization, lime had many uses — making mortar for bricks; replenishing agricultural soil and reducing soil acidity; stabilizing building materials for roads and sidewalks; making steel; and purifying drinking water.

The Risteau family had the first lime kiln on the Cromwell Valley property in 1785. The Jenifer family built the second one in 1883. A decade later, the Shanklin family added a third. The early kilns in the region relied on enslaved labor in what was then known as “lime kiln valley.”

The valley bustled throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction as demand for lime across the nation grew and the labor force with it. But modern manufacturing methods eventually took over, and the Great Depression hastened the end of the lime business. By 1937, the lime dynasty at Cromwell Valley had come to an end.

After neighbors thwarted a housing development on the land in the 1980s, the state of Maryland bought the land, and Cromwell Valley Park opened to visitors in 1993. The kilns were not in great shape then and continued to crumble, along with the log house next door, where the kiln operators lived.

“When I first came here, they were completely falling apart,” said John Robinson, an avid birder who visits the park frequently during its fall hawk watch. “It’s absolutely wonderful,” he said, to see them brought back to life.

Kelly, a longtime park volunteer and retired benefits manager, got the idea to stabilize the kilns after visiting the Furnace Town Living Heritage Village on the Eastern Shore in 2005. He secured $300,000 from the France-Merrick Foundation. After several visits to Annapolis with then-Baltimore County Councilman Wayne Skinner, he secured another $300,000 from the state in a bond bill.

For close to a decade, Kelly could be found mowing the grounds around the kilns and pulling weeds. Now, he walks with a cane and Skinner manages a grounds crew that keeps the kilns neat. One of the boulders honors him. A bench honors another kiln stalwart, Bob Klein, with a sign that says, “Bob’s Bench.”

Mia Walsh, president of the Cromwell Valley Park Council, said the kilns have provided opportunities for the park to lean into its past. Volunteers host history nights along with the park’s popular birding programs.

Visitors can park at the Sherwood Farm lot and walk along the Willow Grove Trail, and the kilns are about a quarter mile down the path on the left. Walsh is grateful for the construction project, which is expected to continue until January and will bring more parking.

New programs aimed at younger visitors, including the popular Thirties and Birdies, have brought in a lot of visitors from Baltimore City who may not be familiar with the valley or its history. The kilns, Walsh said, are a reminder of what was here before The Big Screen Store and the I-695 interchange nearby.

The council established a history committee and had an intern work with Kelly last summer to transcribe some love letters from the Shanklin family. Kelly also emceed a packed open house to share treasures from the Shanklin family’s home.

“Jim has a memory unlike anyone else’s,” Walsh said. “He not only retains all this history in his head, but he’s ensured that the history of the valley’s ancestors lives on.”