MontgomeryParks.org

Natural Resources

• Keep natural trails, providing a place for wildlife.
• Provide a visitor center/gardens like at Brookside Gardens
• Provide an interpretive trail for native plants/trees
• Educate public about danger of non-native invasive plants

• Keep park as natural and undeveloped as possible
• Provide more trail heads with small parking lots and maps
• Soper Branch is eroding badly and needs restoration. Little Bennett was repaired, but not Soper Branch

History/Archeology

• Use/restore historic buildings as part of a new history trail
• Provide more descriptive interpretive signage on trails
• Use Kingsley School for programs, museum, and oral histories; sponsor a reunion of those who attended the school
• Consider sponsoring a winter festival
• Provide day rides on horseback, wagon rides with mules
• Provide benches, passive areas at historic sites

• Consider following at Montgomery Chapel: reunion, oral histories, and archeological survey of cemetery with ground penetrating radar.
• Attract more people to historic sites; use transit, winterize campground, provide sleigh rides
• Provide more interpretation of pre-history
• Include Wims Field, the old baseball field, as an historic interpretive area.

Park and Recreation Facilities

• Support pool
• Oppose pool
• Consider Learning Center for golf
• Modify lighting at Golf parking lot; clubhouse okay
• Any plans for golf expansion should not affect trails
• Consider astronomy center at golf course
• Continue hatchery and stocking
• Maintain stream as a catch and release stream
• Improve stream from Clarksburg Road to MD 355
• Better water supply needed for Fire and Rescue

• Provide picnic areas that are equestrian friendly
• Maintain the passive atmosphere that exists now
• Provide pavilion at Prescott Road parking
• Provide senior softball fields; bocce courts
• Sponsor winter festival in campground area
• Do not pave existing equestrian trails
• More park police for law enforcement
• Provide open area for festival space
• The park needs a focal point and an identity to draw people, whether at a visitors' center or elsewhere

Camping and Trails

• Provide more access for equestrians, especially south of Little Bennett Creek
• Provide equestrian campsites
• Link trails in a more systematic way-too many dead ends
• Mow around open fields to provide trail access
• Expand Froggy Hollow Trail
• Balance expansion of trails with maintaining natural setting
• Pipeline easement could be trail
• Existing trail system not built with recreation in mind, just follows old roads, need new environmentally sound trail system made for fun and enjoyment
• All trails should be shared use
• Consider opening trails near streams
• Consider camping with horses and connecting horse trails from the campground to the larger park network
• Keep and even expand horse trailer parking
• Keep portable toilet at horse trailer lot
• Realign Froggy Hollow trail to make it less steep
• Improve creek crossings
• Need circumferential trail around park
• Need uninterrupted trail along Little Bennett Creek
• Need bridge at Browning Run
• Horse access would be nice to archeological sites, with hitching post
• Provide pavilion at horse parking lot with water pump
• Need better signage with simple map
• Consider color-coding trails-shouldn't get lost on trails

• Realign trails so they don't get muddy
• Consider surface like C&O Canal towpath
• Cyclists like climbing/descent of trails offered at Little Bennett
• Timber Ridge trail needs to be redone
• Need to remember ALL users
• Oppose cabins-keep primitive camping for Scout troops
• Park should have access from public transportation-show bus stops
• Provide interpretive trails oriented to natural landscape (trees, flowers, shrubs)
• More trailhead access would increase trail use
• Need bridge across Little Bennett at Hyattstown
• Extend Clarksburg greenway trail all the way to Hyattstown
• Add bike path to Hyattstown Mill Road
• Provide bike trail connection from Prescott Road to Hyattstown along the north boundary of golf course.
• Provide trail along Prescott Road from trailer parking past golf course to Lewisdale Road.
• All traditional points of horse access should be continued
• Should be some access for horse owners in the community across park from MD 355
• Signs confusing about horses near golf course
• How do we make sure people stay on the trails?
• Campground expansion should be sensitive to trout population
• Wherever trail crosses stream, use stabilized crossing or bridge
• Connect the Damascus trails to the trails in Clarksburg.

Access and Transportation

• Concerned about safety at proposed intersection of MD 355 and Snowden Farm Parkway.
• Major safety issues when crossing Clarksburg Road, weekdays in particular
• Expand existing parking lot on Clarksburg Road and formalize additional lots
• Provide stepping stone bridge (like the one at Seneca Greenway) to access Earls picnic area
• Need formal signage for parking and location maps in parking areas.
• Keep and maintain existing equestrian parking and provide additional horse trailer parking areas
• Consider following related to Clarksburg Road:
• Slower speed limits and other traffic calming measures should be used
• Provide better, safer bike/pedestrian/equestrian access to park from Clarksburg Road

• Should consider closing Clarksburg Road because of safety concerns and for improved park experience
• Improve shoulders on Clarksburg Road, Stringtown Road and Burnt Mill Road for cyclists.
• Clarksburg Greenway should go north all the way to the Frederick county line.
• Bike access from Lewisdale Drive (Class 1): possible connect to the greenway to the north.
• Provide bike access to Hyattstown Mill Rd. from Clarksburg Rd. to proposed greenway to the north.
• No trolley or motorized vehicular service within the park
• Piedmont Road's exrtension to Rt. 355 should go on top of the hill, near the Maintenance Facility, instead of in the valley for improved sight distance.

Implementation Priorities

• Better access. Where will all the people and cars go as development occurs? Small parking lots near activities is one approach.
• Bike trails/bike access
• A "swimming hole" for children
• Nature museum; trails that explore natural history
• Provide for older elementary/teens who now have nothing to do
• Improve trails

• Provide trails for everyone
• Group picnic areas with tables/grills.
• Visitors center, using Brookside Gardens as model
• Improve access to fire department: roadways too narrow, wooden bridges, need ponds for water, no water supply in some areas of park
• First Tee or similar golf learning facility with intermediate 9-hole golf course

General Comments from Audience or by Correspondence

• How often do park police patrol park? Patrols should be increased.
• Need to address future of park houses.
• Volume of traffic on Clarksburg Road is a very big deal.
• Now is time for money to be prioritized for park maintenance by staff; should not rely solely on volunteers.
• Consider having meetings elsewhere in upcounty, too.
• Trails should be widened to allow equestrians and bikers to travel abreast.
• Implement a policy of selected, one-year closures of sections of the park that become stressed or heavily eroded due to overuse.
• Park needs a permanent, well-funded maintenance crew.
• A History Trail should be established linking all the historic sites in the park.
• Frisbee golf should be provided for campers or day visitors in the camping area.
• The 80 plus acres of open field have a lot of erosion, so some fill could be obtained from the housing developers. It percs at 20 g/m.
• Little Bennett is a diamond in the rough: leave it that way!