Wicomico County gets its first state park

Wicomico County will have its first state park after Maryland dedicated Wetipquin Creek State Park on July 21, following the state’s $3.3 million purchase of a 445-acre property on the Delmarva Peninsula.

What’s Happening: The Maryland Department of Natural Resources hosted a preview event for local officials and guests at the site, which centers on the Long Hill house, a mid-18th century plantation home listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974. The park is currently in the planning phase.

What’s Important: When the park opens, every county in Maryland will contain at least one state park. The property includes more than 400 acres of marsh and forest along Wetipquin Creek, which flows through the property and empties into the Nanticoke River.

The History: Long Hill has a long association with the Dashiell family, several of whom were active in colonial Maryland affairs. As with many large Maryland farms of the era, Long Hill used enslaved African Americans for labor. The park’s signage and historic presentations will tell the stories of those enslaved workers. Emmett Dashiell, a descendant of enslaved workers at Long Hill, delivered remarks at the July 21 event, as did Dr. Bryant Mitchell of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, who spoke on behalf of the Wetipquin community. Other local descendants of enslaved workers at Long Hill also attended.

The department of natural resources hosted representatives of the Pocomoke Indian Nation and the Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians. The Nause-Waiwash Band are descendants of two Nanticoke villages who encountered English explorer John Smith in the 1600s.

How This Affects Real People: The park will offer tours, interpretive programs, and educational events covering the Long Hill plantation house, the lives of enslaved people there, the history of Indigenous peoples in the region, and 18th- and 19th-century farm life on the Eastern Shore.

The Purchase: The department received approval to buy the property in 2024 and completed the transaction earlier this year. Previous owner Donald Graham, a descendant of the Dashiell family, attended the event and delivered remarks. Graham had worked with the department’s Maryland Environmental Trust to place a conservation easement on the property in 2016.

The Big Picture: Wetipquin Creek State Park is part of a broader expansion of Maryland’s public lands in 2026, which the state is marking alongside the country’s 250th anniversary of independence. Earlier this year, the Park Service dedicated Freedman’s State Park in Montgomery County, a 1,000-acre property once owned and farmed by a formerly enslaved family whose descendants shaped the Civil Rights Movement in Maryland. The Park Service also accepted a donation of two acres at the Revolutionary War-era Catoctin Furnace, including a historic African-American cemetery, adding it to Cunningham Falls State Park.