My medium-to-long posts on a variety of topics. You can browse my posts through the following categories:
Below are the latest 20 posts:
- The insider’s guide to Autumn Glory in Garrett Co, MDAutumn Glory is a 5 day festival celebrating the beautiful fall foliage of Garrett County MD. There is a lot to see, do, buy and eat during Autumn Glory, so I put together this guide to help you get in all in! Download the presentation with active links Watch the narrated presentation on Youtube
- Garrett County Gazette, August 2023Welcome to the current issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in! Garrett County Gets Some Love from Downstate As the most distant county from Annapolis (geographically and often politically), Garrett … Read more
- The Garrett County that may have beenDid you know that Garrett County could have been about 3 times larger? If the boundaries orignally set forth for Maryland had been followed, the northern border would have been north of Philadelphia, the southern border about 50 miles further south and the western one almost 10 miles to the west! In this presentation, I … Read more
- Summer 2023 letterSummer greetings from your friendly neighborhood real estate agent! Hello! My name is Chris Nichols, a real estate agent with Taylor Made Deep Creek Sales. If you’re thinking about selling or buying real estate in the area, I hope you’ll give me a shot at earning your business. With me as your real estate agent, … Read more
- Garrett County Gazette, July 2023Welcome to the current issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in! Youth sports in Garrett County I don’t know if I am just noticing this, or it’s an actual trend, … Read more
- Garrett County Gazette, June 2023Welcome to the current issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in! Commissioners Adopt FY2024 Budget (with effective tax increase) The Commissioners have approved a $100M operating budget for Garrett County … Read more
- History-themed dates in Garrett CountyNothing impresses your date more than some local history! No? Well you may be dating the wrong kind of person! I was asked by a local historical society to put together a talk on history-themed dates in Garrett County and it was surprisingly easy! My goal was to center on a town or area, find … Read more
- Ferris Wheels and Freemason Gold – a History of Swallow Falls State ParkSwallow Falls State Park is one of the “crown jewels” of the MD State Park system (at least in my mind) and you kind of assume that since it’s such an amazing natural wonder that it has been protected for a long time, but really only became fully under state control in the past 80 … Read more
- Garrett County Gazette, May 2023Garrett County Gazette, May 2023 🌦️ View in browser Welcome to the current issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in! County Commissioners propose to increase tax revenue I try to … Read more
- The “low-down” on Deep Creek Lake water levelsThe waters of Deep Creek Lake have a number of uses including electricity generation, lake recreation, whitewater boating and trout habitat enhancement. The level of Deep Creek Lake is governed by a permit issued by the Maryland Department of the Environment which attempts to balance these uses. In this presentation, I go through the uses … Read more
- The First Visitor’s Map of Deep Creek Lake?A friend of mine recently gave me this map that he purchased at an auction. What a find! It’s a 1936 map of Deep Creek Lake made by Frank Corliss, who was in charge of the surveying for the original land acquisition of the lake. Labeled with roads, the businesses along the “strip” on 219 … Read more
- Where to swim in Garrett County, MDSummer is coming and a common question is “Where can I go swimming?” Deep Creek Lake of course comes to many people’s minds, but with so many streams, rivers and lakes and so much public land, there are lots of other places to go swimming, from sandy beaches to river plunges. Check out the narrated … Read more
- Garrett County Gazette, April 2023View in browser Welcome to the current issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in! No school closures(for another year at least) Over the past few months, the Garrett County Board … Read more
- Who OWNS Garrett County, MD?I’ve been working on some projects looking at large landowners in the County and decided to make it a full analysis of ownership types across the whole County. Below are the slides from the presentation and you can watch a narrated version on my Youtube channel
- Garrett County Gazette, March 2023View in browser Welcome to the current issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in!Special Olympics of Maryland returns to Garrett County for Winter Games After nearly a decade, the Special Olympics … Read more
- Introducing the ULTIMATE Deep Creek Lake map!Hopefully, you’ve already seen my ULTIMATE Garrett County and DCL + 8 town wall maps, and my ULTIMATE Garrett County Adventure Map. By far, the most common requests are for maps specifically of Deep Creek Lake (you can get the DCL + 9 towns map and cut off the bottom, but who wants to deface … Read more
- My trail wish listThe subject of trails has been in the local news lately. I decided to add my 2 cents worth to the discussion with a video of what new trails I’d like to see in Garrett County. You can download the slides here Watch the narrated version on my Youtube channel Or see all the slides … Read more
- Garrett County Gazette, February 2023*|MC:SUBJECT|* *|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|* Welcome to the December issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in! Deep Creek Lake Lions celebrate 50 years of the Blind Skier program On the evening of Feb 7 … Read more
- Garrett County Gazette, January 2023*|MC:SUBJECT|* *|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|* View this email in your browser Welcome to the December issue of the Garrett County Gazette. I’m Chris Nichols, your guide to helping you find out what’s going on, what’s coming up and interesting tidbits from the area. Let’s jump right in! Affordable Housing Issue Gaining Attention As you’ll see in my real estate … Read more
- 2022 Real Estate Sales Report for Garrett County, MDBelow is my Real Estate Sales Report for Garrett County, MD for 2022. I had prepared it as a presentation, so the images of each slide are shown below. You can watch a narrated version on Youtube You can download a pdf of the report here.