The Ultimate Guide to Underground Railroad Sites in Maryland

A family reading on a display inside of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad visitors Center

Hidden in the landscape, Maryland's Underground Railroad sites await your exploration. See where freedom fighters altered the course of history with their bravery, courage and sacrifice.

Hundreds of freedom seekers risked their lives to escape from slavery in Maryland. Full of courage and inspiration, more people successfully fled from bondage in Maryland than from any other state. Their heroic stories are plentiful and riveting and are told through the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom sites and through programs and tours that share freedom seekers’ struggles and triumphs. Here you can discover the real Underground Railroad and find out why Maryland is the most powerful Underground Railroad story-telling destination in the world.

Explore Underground Railroad sites in all of Maryland’s regions to become familiar with personal stories of escape from this tumultuous era in our nation’s history. Download Maryland's Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Guide (PDF) to get started on your journey.

Maryland’s Network to Freedom includes safe houses of sympathetic African Americans and whites who risked their lives to help self-liberators reach freedom, and it also includes other unique places they stopped and stayed, the routes they took and places they hid, like shipyards, waterways, woods and fields. Some enslaved people fled to join the ranks of the Union Army where the Civil War was being fought. Learn how so many people sought freedom in Maryland.

However, not everyone was successful. To commemorate the full Underground Railroad story, the Network to Freedom includes places that epitomized opposition to freedom, such as farms and plantations where freedom seekers fled enslavement. It also includes the sites of captures, arrests, trials and jails where freedom seekers and their accomplices lost their struggles for freedom.

Tours of Hampton Mansion include descriptions of the roles enslaved people had at the plantation and stories of escapes.

Tours at Sotterley Plantation include the interior of this rare slave cabin.

Guided and self-guided tours on the Underground Railroad Experience in Maryland describe the ways freedom seekers eluded capture and survived on their journeys.

Maryland’s Eastern Shore

The Eastern Shore was the birthing ground of several famous and lesser-known Underground Railroad leaders, such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Highland Garnet. Numerous successful escapes originated from the rural Eastern Shore, often using waterways to travel, and yet some freedom seekers were met with the tragedy of capture and return to slavery. The Shore is home to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, a crown jewel in the Network to Freedom collection. Driving tours, walking tours and historic sites delve into these stories.

Central Maryland

Baltimore’s busy city streets and the waterfront docks in Fells Point were the backdrop for a large free black population that worked and intermingled with the enslaved. Here was the perfect place for freedom seekers to blend in, hide or work alongside other African-Americans. In Baltimore and in Annapolis, black sailors called blackjacks could hide freedom seekers in cargo or carry messages to family members in distant ports. Museums and historic sites explore the stories of freedom seekers who escaped from cities, docks, nearby farms and plantations.

Southern Maryland

The rolling countryside of Southern Maryland is known for its former tobacco plantations where a large enslaved population labored to support the lavish lifestyle of their owners. Yet some were able to escape oppression. A few fled slavery to join the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War. The Southern Maryland peninsulas are surrounded by water, and access to the Chesapeake and its rivers enhanced opportunities for escape. But the risk of capture was great, and some fugitives were caught. Tour former plantations and historic sites that tell these stories.

Capital and Western Regions

The area near our nation’s capital holds the roots of Josiah Henson's life, whose memoir inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe to write her abolitionist novel, "Uncle Tom’s Cabin." In the rural areas surrounding the capital, numerous enslaved people escaped from wealthy landowners. Some blended into the free black communities living in Washington, D.C. Others fled on foot. Thrilling escape attempts and sometimes captures ensued. Parks, house museums, and walking tours illustrate experiences on the Underground Railroad.

Trip Tips

Look for programs and special events at Network to Freedom sites especially during Black History Month and Juneteenth. Baltimore’s African American Festival and The Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival are not-to-be-missed, and events are planned in 2022 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Harriet Tubman's birth.

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Harriet Tubman, known as the “Moses of Her People,” escaped slavery in Maryland but returned, leading about 70 enslaved men, women and children to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.. Discover more Maryland Freedom Fighters.

Chester County Historical Society

Frederick Douglass rose above his horrific childhood in slavery to become a self-liberated leader, orator, writer, and statesperson, working for the abolition of slavery and the education of African Americans. Discover more Maryland Freedom Fighters.

New York Public Library

Josiah Henson’s 1849 autobiography “The Life of Josiah Henson” inspired the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel "Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which helped turn Americans against slavery. Discover more Maryland Freedom Fighters.

New York Public Library

William Still, a famous Underground Railroad agent in Philadelphia, helped Harriet Tubman and hundreds more, which he chronicled in his book "The Underground Railroad." His family, once enslaved, escaped from near Denton. Discover more Maryland Freedom Fighters.

Wesleyan University Press - Image of James W.C. Pennington

One of the most prominent African-American leaders of the 19th century described his life and his dramatic escape from slavery in his autobiography "The Fugitive Blacksmith." Pennington became a powerful Presbyterian minister, abolitionist, civil rights activist, and Underground Railroad agent. Discover more Maryland Freedom Fighters.

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Artist: James U. Stead - Photo of Henry Highland Garnet

Henry Highland Garnet escaped from slavery near Chestertown and became a renowned minister and radical abolitionist, famous for his “Call to Rebellion” speech in 1848. Discover more Maryland Freedom Fighters.

Maryland Lore

Many freedom seekers escaped via water aboard ships on the Chesapeake Bay bound for ports in the North.

Faqs About The Underground Railroad in Maryland

Q: Where is the Underground Railroad in Maryland?

A: The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway is the main route of the Maryland Underground Railroad, and it weaves along the Eastern Shore of Maryland for 125 miles, crossing at Sandtown, Delaware. The byway travels 98 miles farther through Dover and then to Wilmington, Delaware.

Q: What was Maryland’s role in the Underground Railroad?

A: Maryland was a major part of the Underground Railroad because courageous and impactful leaders of freedom, like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, called Maryland home. The history of the Railroad also thrives in Maryland because of the intricate and secret network of safehouses and routes to freedom that ran through the state.

Q: Where was Harriet Tubman’s childhood home in Maryland?

A: Harriet Tubman was born in 1822 on Anthony Thompson’s plantation in Cambridge, and in her early years, was enslaved at the Brodess Farm in Bucktown, Dorchester County, Maryland, with the rest of her family. Visitors can see the site of Tubman’s childhood home in Cambridge to this day.

Q: How many freedom seekers did Harriet Tubman help?

A: After escaping to Philadelphia herself in 1849, Tubman returned to Maryland to help lead her remaining family and friends to freedom. Over the course of her heroic Underground Railroad journey, which ended in December 1860, she freed about 70 people through approximately 13 trips back to Maryland.