Sunday Fun Run

A Sunday morning fun run around Lake Montebello is scheduled for 11am. Hopefully the weather will be conducive for an enjoyable run. See you there!!

A little something about Lake Montebello and surrounding Mayfield:

By 1881 Baltimore water engineers had created Lake Montebello from over 60 acres of farm and woodland at the City's northern edge. Along with Lake Clifton, a low dam at Loch Raven, and interconnecting tunnels, it represented the City's first step toward a modern reservoir system.

Previously, Baltimore's water supply had been drawn from Lake Roland, a man-made creation of the mid-nineteenth century. Lake Montebello, with a circumference of one and a half miles, was made by damming Tiffany's Run, a small stream which had formerly run into the nearby Herring Run. The lake was built to store water piped down from the Gunpowder River and other fresh streams. The excavation work and the job of digging the 12-foot wide brick-lined tunnels had to be done largely by man and animal power. This took about four yeers. When first filled, the lake appeared much as it does today, but the treatment did not begin until 1910. Used as a reservoir only until 1914 Montebello later provided water to clean the filter beds in the Montebello Filtration Plant. The filter building was constructed in 1915, with additional facilities added in the 1920s, to be followed by later improvements. An attractive cluster of nineteenth century structures has been retained and put to adaptive reuse at the filtration site.

The cross-gable house and stables constructed of local stone, like that used in the early Morgan State College buildings, were part of the "Union Grove" estate held by the Brodie family throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. During the 1920s the Northeast Baltimore Community Association asked the old water board to convert the reservoir into a boat lake. This proposal was turned down by a water engineer because of the expense of supervision and the danger of contamination of this reserve supply of water. By the mid-twentieth century, Lake Montebello had become a popular attraction for strollers, runners, and bicyclists.