Skip to content
Dowden's Ordinary Special Park, Clarksburg, MD

Photo: G. Edward Johnson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.

Sports & Outdoors

Dowden's Ordinary Special Park

A 2.75-acre Montgomery Parks site in Clarksburg built around the history of an 18th-century tavern.

23169 Stringtown Road, Clarksburg, MD 20871 · Clarksburg, MD

About Dowden's Ordinary Special Park

This small county park in Clarksburg preserves the story of Dowden's Ordinary, a tavern that Michael Dowden sought a license to run in 1750 on the road between Rockville and Frederick. A ghost structure outlines the tavern's original building style, and archaeologists have recovered bottles, pipes, cooking pans, and many oyster shells from the site. Visitors find a walking path, benches, historic interpretive signs, a playground, and a climbable elephant statue that nods to an elephant toured along the East Coast in the early 1800s. The park also displays a Clarksburg Flag designed in 2015.

  • #historic tavern
  • #ghost structure
  • #playground
  • #walking path
  • #interpretive signs

What's around here?

The closest stops to Dowden's Ordinary Special Park, ordered by straight-line distance. A few more like it, plus some different kinds of fun so you can build a full day.

  • Sports & Outdoors

    Black Hill Regional Park

    No admission fee

    Over 2,000 acres of outdoor recreation around Little Seneca Lake in Montgomery County, Maryland.

    2.8 mi awayMore like this

  • Sports & Outdoors

    Seneca Creek State Park

    Under $25

    A roughly 6,300-acre Maryland state park along Seneca Creek, known for trails, boating, disc golf, and local history.

    6.4 mi awayMore like this

  • Sports & Outdoors

    Bowie Mill Park

    Check prices

    A small neighborhood park beside Sequoyah Elementary with play equipment and tennis courts.

    11 mi awayMore like this

  • Sightseeing

    Monocacy National Battlefield

    No admission fee

    Maryland Civil War battlefield where outnumbered Union troops delayed a Confederate advance toward the capital in 1864.

    11 mi awaySwitch it up: Sightseeing

  • Museums
    Date Night

    Glenstone

    No admission fee

    See postwar and contemporary art in quiet pavilions and outdoor sculptures set across meadows, woods and a water garden.

    Transit: reachable by public transit

    12 mi awaySwitch it up: Museums

  • Museums

    National Museum of Civil War Medicine

    Check prices

    A Frederick museum focused on medical, surgical, and nursing care during the American Civil War.

    14 mi awaySwitch it up: Museums

Near Dowden's Ordinary Special Park

More of the same kind

Keep exploring