Maryland holds 234 documented abandoned places on the Urbex Maps atlas -- a surprisingly high count for one of the smallest and wealthiest states in America, explained by the state's unusual geography: Maryland is simultaneously a Chesapeake Bay tidewater state, a mid-Atlantic industrial corridor, and a ring of suburban counties encircling Washington, D.C. Each zone has produced its own category of abandonment. The tidewater counties contributed 19th-century lighthouses, Civil War fortifications, and the ruins of an oyster-and-crabbing economy. The industrial corridor -- Baltimore and its suburbs -- contributed asylum campuses, institutional complexes, and a factory landscape that peaked in the mid-20th century and has been declining since. The outer suburbs contributed the ruins of resort economy: the Enchanted Forest in Ellicott City, the amusement parks and roadside attractions that served the post-war car culture and collapsed when that culture shifted.
Maryland's most significant urbex sites are its asylum campuses. The state built an extraordinary number of psychiatric hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the post-1970s deinstitutionalization movement left behind some of the most architecturally substantial abandoned campuses on the East Coast. Forest Haven Asylum in Laurel, Henryton State Hospital in Marriottsville, Glenn Dale Hospital in Prince George's County, and Rosewood Center in Owings Mills form a quartet of abandoned institutional campuses that collectively represent the rise and fall of the American state psychiatric system in one small state.
This guide covers 10 of the most significant abandoned places in Maryland, with free GPS coordinates on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas, verified YouTube embeds, and factual historical context for each site.
Free urbex GPS: how Urbex Maps works
Every spot in this guide has a free GPS pin on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. No account required -- just coordinates with satellite imagery and access notes. The full Maryland database has 234 documented locations, covering institutional campuses, harbor fortifications, tidewater ruins, and suburban ghost attractions.
1. Forest Haven Asylum, Laurel
Forest Haven in Laurel is one of the most notorious abandoned institutional sites in the mid-Atlantic region -- a former facility for people with intellectual disabilities that operated from 1925 to 1991 and became the subject of a landmark federal lawsuit that established national standards for the treatment of people with developmental disabilities in state institutions. Forest Haven was built as a working farm colony, following the early 20th-century philosophy that people with intellectual disabilities should be housed in rural communities where they could perform agricultural labor as therapy. The 225-acre campus in Prince George's County included dormitories, a school, a farm, and workshop buildings.
By the 1960s and 1970s, conditions at Forest Haven had deteriorated catastrophically. Investigations documented severe overcrowding, physical abuse by staff, inadequate medical care, and the deaths of residents from preventable causes. A 1976 federal lawsuit (Evans v. Washington) resulted in a consent decree requiring the District of Columbia -- which had been sending residents to Forest Haven under contract with Maryland -- to relocate its patients and close the facility. The closure was completed in 1991 after a multi-year process of relocating the 375 remaining residents to community-based care.
The Forest Haven campus has been vacant since 1991. The brick dormitory buildings, the farm structures, and the institutional support buildings are deteriorating across the wooded Prince George's County landscape. The site is on public land (Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission property) and has been the subject of ongoing debates about whether to preserve, redevelop, or demolish the campus. Its combination of architectural significance and historical notoriety -- the site where a federal lawsuit reshaped American disability policy -- makes it one of the most compelling abandoned institutional sites in Maryland.
2. Henryton State Hospital, Marriottsville
Henryton State Hospital in Marriottsville was Maryland's only state tuberculosis hospital for Black patients -- a product of the racial segregation that characterized public health infrastructure across the United States from the late 19th century through desegregation. Established in 1922 in Carroll County, Henryton was built during the tuberculosis epidemic that disproportionately affected urban Black communities in the early 20th century. The campus was designed in the pavilion plan standard for TB hospitals: separate buildings arranged on a hillside to maximize fresh air exposure, with sleeping porches and large windows oriented to capture sunlight.
As tuberculosis was conquered by antibiotics in the late 1940s and 1950s, Henryton's mission changed. The facility transitioned to serving patients with intellectual disabilities and mental illness, and it operated in that capacity until 1985, when the state closed it as part of Maryland's deinstitutionalization initiative. The campus of approximately 10 buildings -- brick pavilions, a powerhouse, an administration building, and support structures -- has been vacant for decades.
Carroll County acquired the property and has deliberated for years about what to do with the Henryton campus, which sits in a wooded valley that has significant natural landscape value alongside the deteriorating buildings. Demolition and adaptive reuse proposals have both been advanced; as of 2026, the buildings remain standing, accessible to hikers on the county's trail system that passes through the property. The brick pavilions and their remaining institutional details are in advanced decay. The site's history as Maryland's segregated TB facility gives it a historical weight that purely aesthetic ruins lack.
3. Glenn Dale Hospital, Glenn Dale
Glenn Dale Hospital in Prince George's County is the largest abandoned building complex in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area -- a former tuberculosis sanatorium that closed in 1981 and has been deteriorating on 216 acres of Prince George's County parkland for over four decades. The hospital was built in 1934 by the District of Columbia government on land in suburban Maryland to treat tuberculosis patients, following the city's longstanding practice of siting its institutions outside District limits. The campus included two main hospital buildings (the adult pavilion and the children's pavilion) and more than a dozen support structures, all built in a Georgian Revival brick style of unusual architectural quality for a public health facility.
Glenn Dale continued operating as a tuberculosis hospital through the mid-20th century, then transitioned to treating other chronic conditions as TB rates declined. The hospital closed in 1981, and the property was transferred to Prince George's County, which has managed it as county parkland while debating what to do with the buildings for over 40 years. The debate has been remarkably contentious: preservationists argue for adaptive reuse, citing the architectural quality of the buildings; county officials cite the extraordinary cost of asbestos remediation and structural repair.
The buildings have deteriorated significantly during the decades of indecision. Asbestos, lead paint, and structural instability make independent access genuinely dangerous -- this is one of the more legitimately hazardous abandoned sites in the region, and the county has posted the property and enforced no-trespassing rules at various times. The scale of the complex -- two large hospital buildings visible from Route 193 -- makes it one of the most dramatic abandoned landscapes in the Washington suburbs.
4. Fort Carroll, Baltimore Harbor
Fort Carroll in Baltimore Harbor is one of the most unusual abandoned structures in America -- a hexagonal stone island fort built on an artificial island in the Patapsco River, designed by Robert E. Lee (then a U.S. Army engineer) in the 1840s and never completed. Construction began in 1848 and continued intermittently through the Civil War era, but the fort was never finished to its intended three-story configuration: only the granite base and portions of the casemate level were completed before the project was abandoned as Civil War-era fortification design made the masonry fort concept obsolete. Lee's fort sits in the middle of Baltimore's shipping channel, a 3.4-acre hexagonal granite structure rising just above the waterline.
The completed portions of Fort Carroll served as a proving ground for artillery testing and were briefly reactivated during the Civil War and Spanish-American War, but the fort was never garrisoned as a combat fortification. It was decommissioned in 1921 and has been abandoned since then, with various ownership changes and development proposals over the subsequent century. A 1958 plan to develop the island as a casino came closest to realization before falling through. The fort is currently owned by a private family, the Pressmanns, who purchased it in the 1950s.
The island is accessible only by boat and is not officially open to the public, though it is visible from the Francis Scott Key Bridge approach and from charter boats in the harbor. Trees have grown on the granite ramparts over the decades of abandonment; a lighthouse built on the fort's structure in 1873 still stands. Fort Carroll is a genuinely rare example of a major military engineering project by a future Civil War general, abandoned before completion and sitting in an active harbor.
5. Daniels (Ghost Town), Howard County
Daniels in Howard County is one of the best-preserved mill town ghost towns on the East Coast -- the remnant of a textile mill community that operated in the Patapsco River valley from the early 19th century through 1972, when flooding from Hurricane Agnes destroyed the mill and the company chose not to rebuild. The Daniels Company, which had operated the mill for generations, sold the flood-damaged property rather than rebuilding, and the community that had grown up around the mill was dispersed. Most of the worker housing was demolished after 1972.
What remains in the Patapsco Valley State Park -- which absorbed the former mill property -- is the Saint Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church (1879), a stone Gothic Revival church built by the mill's immigrant Polish workforce, standing in complete isolation in the river valley as the last surviving building of the Daniels community. The church is structurally intact and is occasionally used for services; the surrounding landscape holds the traces of the vanished mill town: the footprints of demolished housing, the mill race that powered the looms, and the stone dam across the Patapsco.
The Daniels church is accessible via the Patapsco Valley State Park trail system. The park encompasses the former mill site, and hikers regularly pass through the ghost town landscape. The combination of the intact Gothic church in a wooded river valley setting and the documented history of the community that built it makes Daniels one of the most atmospheric ghost town sites in the mid-Atlantic region.
6. Enchanted Forest (Shopping Center Remains), Ellicott City
The Enchanted Forest on Route 40 in Ellicott City was one of the defining roadside attractions of the mid-20th century American suburban landscape -- a fairy tale theme park that opened in 1955 with storybook scenes, giant mushrooms, a gingerbread house, Cinderella's pumpkin carriage, and the full visual vocabulary of mid-century American childhood entertainment. The park operated until 1988, when it was sold and the 52-acre property redeveloped as a strip mall called Enchanted Forest Shopping Center. The new owners preserved some of the original fairy tale structures on a corner of the property, but most were demolished.
The surviving storybook structures -- Cinderella's castle, Little Miss Muffet's tuffet, the Old Woman's Shoe -- were stored, deteriorated, and eventually became the subject of a preservation campaign by the Clark's Elioak Farm in nearby Howard County. The farm has been reassembling the surviving Enchanted Forest structures on its property, creating a partial reconstruction of the original park's character. Meanwhile, the shopping center on the Route 40 site has itself gone through cycles of vacancy and partial reuse.
The Enchanted Forest case is a characteristic piece of mid-20th century American suburban cultural history: a beloved roadside attraction demolished for a strip mall that then itself struggled economically. The storybook structures that survived preservation efforts have been described by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as among the most endangered examples of mid-century commercial folk art in America. The Clark's Elioak Farm restoration project is open seasonally and is the best way to see the surviving structures.
7. Point Lookout Lighthouse, Scotland
Point Lookout Lighthouse at the southern tip of St. Mary's County stands at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay -- a navigational position of critical importance since European settlement of the Chesapeake. The lighthouse was built in 1830 and is one of the oldest surviving light structures on the bay; it marks the location where the Potomac empties into the Chesapeake, a shipping lane used by vessels serving Washington, D.C. since the colonial era. The lighthouse's hexagonal keeper's cottage design is distinctive among Chesapeake lights.
Point Lookout's most significant historical role was as the location of Point Lookout Prison Camp during the Civil War. The camp, operated from 1863 to 1865 on the peninsula behind the lighthouse, held up to 52,000 Confederate prisoners of war over its two years of operation -- making it the largest Union prison camp of the war. The death toll was catastrophic: between 3,384 and 8,000 prisoners died at Point Lookout from disease, exposure, and malnutrition in the overcrowded camp. The peninsula is now managed as Point Lookout State Park, and the prison camp site is the most significant preserved Civil War POW landscape in the Union states.
The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1966 and has been managed by the state park since then. The lighthouse keeper's quarters are not currently open for regular public tours, though the grounds and the Point Lookout State Park are publicly accessible. The combination of the 1830 lighthouse, the Civil War prison camp landscape, and the bay-and-river meeting point makes Point Lookout one of the most historically layered sites on the Chesapeake.
8. Elk Neck State Forest Ruins, Cecil County
Elk Neck State Forest in Cecil County contains the ruins of 19th-century resort and agricultural infrastructure at the tip of the Elk Neck peninsula, where the Elk River meets the Northeast River before they join the Chesapeake Bay. The Elk Neck peninsula developed as a summer resort area in the late 19th century, serving Baltimore and Philadelphia families who came by steamboat to spend the warm months along the bay. The resort hotels, cottages, and estate houses that made up this summer community operated through the early 20th century before the automobile shifted recreational patterns and the steamboat lines closed.
The state forest, which was assembled from private lands beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, absorbed the ruins of this resort landscape. Stone foundations, brick chimneys, the traces of carriage roads, and the remnants of agricultural infrastructure from the farms that preceded the resort development are distributed across the Elk Neck peninsula under the second-growth forest. Turkey Point Lighthouse (1833), at the tip of the peninsula, is a functioning aid to navigation and accessible via a trail through the forest.
The Elk Neck ruins are not individually dramatic but are historically significant as a preserved example of the 19th-century Chesapeake resort economy. The forest itself -- 3,003 acres of mixed hardwood and pine on the bay peninsula -- is publicly accessible for hiking, hunting, and camping. The ruins are encountered incidentally along the trail system rather than being formally interpreted.
9. Fort Smallwood, Anne Arundel County
Fort Smallwood on the western shore of the Patapsco River in Anne Arundel County was one of Baltimore's harbor defense installations -- a Spanish-American War-era coastal artillery battery that formed part of the Chesapeake Bay defensive network protecting the approaches to Baltimore. Built in 1898-1900 as one of a series of harbor fortifications the Army constructed following the vulnerability exposed by the Spanish-American War, Fort Smallwood mounted 6-inch disappearing guns on barbette carriages designed to rise above the battery parapet to fire and then lower to reload, protecting the gun crew from counter-battery fire.
The fort was updated with additional batteries during World War I and was part of the Baltimore harbor defenses through World War II, when the Army added searchlight positions, mine control facilities, and anti-aircraft batteries to the site. After the war, the Army declared the property surplus and transferred it to Anne Arundel County, which has operated it as Fort Smallwood Park since the 1950s. The park is publicly accessible; the concrete battery structures, the magazine, the fire control station, and the supporting infrastructure from multiple eras of construction are all present.
The harbor defense battery at Fort Smallwood is one of the better-preserved examples of Endicott-era coastal artillery in the mid-Atlantic region. Fort Smallwood's battery infrastructure is accessible within the county park and is documented by the Coast Defense Study Group.
10. Rosewood Center, Owings Mills
Rosewood Center in Owings Mills is the oldest state institution for people with intellectual disabilities in Maryland -- a facility established in 1888 as the "Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children" and operating continuously for 121 years until 2009, when the last resident was relocated and the campus was closed. Rosewood was one of the last large state institutions in Maryland and its closure marked the culmination of the deinstitutionalization movement that had begun in the 1970s.
The Rosewood campus covers approximately 330 acres in Baltimore County and includes over 30 buildings constructed across multiple eras from the original 1888 structures through 20th-century expansions. The architectural range is significant: Victorian-era institutional buildings, Colonial Revival dormitories from the 1920s and 1930s, and mid-20th century additions create a chronological record of state institutional architecture across more than a century. The campus is on the National Register of Historic Places, acknowledged as a significant example of institutional planning and architecture even given its troubled history.
Rosewood's history includes the eugenics era -- the institution participated in Maryland's sterilization programs in the early 20th century -- and subsequent decades of documented abuse and neglect that contributed to the federal disability rights movement. The state of Maryland has been working toward redevelopment of the campus since closure, with proposals for mixed-use development incorporating preservation of the historic buildings. As of 2026, the campus remains largely vacant.
FAQ
Is Forest Haven Asylum accessible?
The Forest Haven campus is on Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission property and is not formally open to public tours. The grounds have been accessed by urban explorers over the years, but the buildings are in advanced decay and access is legally restricted.
Can you visit Glenn Dale Hospital?
Glenn Dale is on Prince George's County parkland and the county has enforced no-trespassing regulations due to asbestos and structural hazards. The buildings are visible from Route 193. Independent access is legally prohibited and genuinely dangerous.
Is the Enchanted Forest theme park still visible?
Most of the original structures were demolished when the property was redeveloped as a shopping center in 1988. The surviving storybook structures have been relocated to Clark's Elioak Farm in Howard County, which is open seasonally.
What is the Daniels ghost town?
Daniels is a former mill town in Howard County's Patapsco Valley State Park. The Saint Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church (1879) is the last surviving building. The site is accessible via park trails.
Is Fort Carroll open to the public?
Fort Carroll is privately owned and accessible only by boat. It is not officially open to public visits. The island is visible from the Francis Scott Key Bridge and from harbor boat tours.
What is happening to Rosewood Center?
The state of Maryland has been working on a redevelopment plan for the 330-acre Rosewood campus that would incorporate historic preservation of the significant buildings. As of 2026, no development has begun and the buildings remain vacant.
Conclusion
Maryland's 234 documented abandoned places span the full range of the mid-Atlantic experience -- from the oldest surviving Chesapeake lighthouse to the largest abandoned institutional campus in the Washington suburbs, from a Civil War harbor fort designed by Robert E. Lee to a fairy tale theme park demolished for a strip mall. Free GPS coordinates for all 10 sites are on the interactive atlas.
Explore more abandoned places in the US
- ●Abandoned Places in Virginia: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in West Virginia: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Pennsylvania: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in New York: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Ghost Towns USA: 20 Iconic Places
- ●Abandoned Places USA: 50 States, 50 Iconic Urbex Spots
