"Ghost Rivers" run below Baltimore, but an art installation reveals them

TV is a visual medium, as is the website where you are reading this now. But today's "Where's Marty?" was about an invisible series of large underground streams that flow beneath the city, and have for 10,000 years. They are called "Ghost Rivers."

They are mostly found under North Central Baltimore City around Johns Hopkins University, and the Remington neighborhood. But it is not like I could take pictures of them to post in this blog I make for you daily.

The water is under streets and sidewalks, but a public art project is making those rivers visible. The 1.5-mile-long installation and walking tour by artist Bruce Willen uses painted blue lines to visualize Sumwalt Run, a lost stream buried below the streets of Baltimore.

Another way to track Baltimore's Ghost Rivers is with Blue Water Baltimore's Ghost Rivers website.

That blue line is the path of the Sumwalt Run under 27th Street in Remington. And if you click the "Sumwalt Run" button, at the top of the website, a drop-down menu appears. It has the location of the identified streams. And by clicking on a location you can see artwork showing the girth of the flows over real pictures of the areas!

How the streams were covered by tunnels, and filled over to create neighborhood land, and roads, is really wild. For instance a valley with, on it's West side a cliff at Huntington and 27th, ran from the Wyman Park Dell South along Howard Street.

Drive or, walk it now, and you would think it is flat or gently rolling ground. But not in the past. It was filled in. WILD!

Cruise the site, and watch the videos, it is worth your time. Our two guests are very insightful about the Ghost Rivers!

Marty B!