MD owns an historic hunting lodge leased to wealthy corporate members. Should it stay that way?

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HANCOCK — Nestled in the Western Maryland woodlands and accessible only by a winding, mile-long gravel driveway is a hunting lodge that has served as a rural escape for generations of “men of means.”

Among its most notable guests are six U.S. presidents and baseball legend Babe Ruth.

“Woodmont was the first Camp David,” said Linda Worden, who has managed the lodge with her husband for nearly 20 years.

It’s about an hour-long drive from Catoctin Mountain Park — home to Camp David — to the Woodmont Lodge, just outside the town of Hancock and near the thinnest part of the rural Maryland panhandle, where less than two miles separate the Pennsylvania line and the south bank of the Potomac River, bordering West Virginia.

While the state Department of Natural Resources owns the nearly 19,000-square-foot lodge and the land surrounding it, a collection of about 30 corporate club members still reserves exclusive access to the area for half the year.

The general public can tour the lodge and visit the property on certain days between April and September, but recent comments from a state senator who represents the area have renewed questions about the level of exclusive access that should be reserved for Woodmont club members, who each year pay tens of thousands of dollars to staff and maintain the historic facility.

Central to the conversation is the degree to which taxpayers should have access to public property in public parkland.

“The Woodmont property, the public does have access to that — one day a year,” said state Sen. Michael McKay, a Western Maryland Republican. “One day a year.”

The senator’s comments came during a meeting in which the Board of Public Works approved the purchase of a rural resort in his district.

“This is just one example of a mistake that I don’t want to see repeated,” McKay said about the state’s purchase of, and lease agreement for, the Woodmont property.

Woodmont was the first Camp David.
— Linda Worden

While the Woodmont club and DNR officials say their lease agreement has helped maintain the historic lodge and protect thousands of acres of forest land, McKay said his constituents have come to him criticizing what they see as a private group controlling state-owned property. One former county commissioner likened it to a state-funded private resort.

And former state officials have wondered if Woodmont is largely an exclusive club that hasn’t made room for women and people of color.

The club comprises corporate members. Its president said that when membership openings arise, any interested company may join so long as they pay the required fees, which these days average about $26,700 a year, and follow usage and safety rules. The club, he said, doesn’t dictate in any way whom the corporate members bring as part of their company or as guests.

He and the Wordens, who manage the property, are hopeful the state will agree to continue their lease agreement beyond its 2028 expiration date.

A rural retreat for powerful men

The Woodmont club traces its origins to a fateful meeting between a rear admiral and a young man taking solace in the rural hills of Hancock after fleeing Virginia during the Civil War.

After hitting it off during a chance encounter on a Washington, D.C., streetcar, Rear Admiral Robley Evans took up the young man’s offer to visit the Maryland hills and experience the area’s abundance of hunting game, according to the Washington County Historical Trust.

He returned to the district with what must have been an enviable loot of venison and wild turkey to accompany accounts of a hunting man’s paradise roughly 100 miles away, the historical trust’s account states.

In 1870, Evans and a group of fellow wealthy and influential men purchased thousands of acres in the area and formed the Woodmont Rod and Gun Club, with a dilapidated 140-year-old log home serving as its first clubhouse.

The club was a hunting retreat for the district’s rich and powerful until a fire destroyed a clubhouse they’d built, taking with it all of the club’s records.

The fire spared only a few pictures and a handmade chair reserved for visiting U.S. presidents, which to that point included James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the club in later years.

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The three-story fieldstone lodge that stands today was built in 1930. The structure features massive beams, wood paneling and floors, walls adorned with old guns and 50 or so mounted animal heads, and stone fireplaces to accompany other game trophies and photos of famous guests and members.

Nowadays, a typical day for a visiting Woodmont club member might include hours of hunting game birds or fishing, followed by an evening recounting the day’s events with drinks around a large fireplace before heading to the lodge’s lavish dining room for a feast prepared by a chef named Marcel and served by a waitstaff of local high school boys.

During their period of exclusive access, club members cycle in and out of the 12-bedroom lodge for getaways, trips with clients, friends, family and whomever else, filling an almost nonstop six-month schedule for the Wordens and their team of more than two dozen employees.

A new era of state ownership

Woodmont membership declined late in the 20th century, and in the ‘90s reached a point where annual dues were no longer enough to cover staffing, operations and maintenance. The financial woes prompted the Rod and Gun Club to put the lodge and thousands of acres around it on the market.

The roughly 3,400-acre property was appraised for as much as $4.2 million in 1994, worth about $8.8 million in 2024.

In 1995, the state Department of Natural Resources purchased the property for about $3.1 million, the equivalent of $6.4 million today.

The state also spent about $309,000 to demolish worn-down structures on the property, among other upgrades, before allowing public access.

Maryland couldn’t afford to purchase and maintain the lodge on its own. As part of the acquisition, The Conservation Fund, a national land trust, held the property until the state was able to buy it back.

In 1997, the state agreed to lease the lodge and about 1,400 acres surrounding it for $1 per year to the Izaak Walton League of America, one of the country’s oldest conservation organizations. The national nonprofit is headquartered in Gaithersburg.

Under the initial 15-year lease, the Izaak Walton League established a local chapter — named for Woodmont — that would carry on the Rod and Gun Club’s legacy and cover the management costs for the property.

In 2010, the two parties signed a new lease, this time for 18 years. The agreement is set to expire in 2028.

At any given time, the Woodmont club has between 27 and 30 corporate members, generally representing well-known law firms, large banks, engineering and construction firms and other local and regional businesses based in the Mid-Atlantic region, said chapter president Mark Keener, a partner with the Baltimore law firm Gallagher Evelius & Jones.

Keener’s firm and Towson-based Heritage Properties, Morris & Ritchie Associates and Columbia National Real Estate are among the club’s members, as are a number of Baltimore’s big-name banks, the club president said.

The six-month period — from Oct. 1 through March 31 — during which the club has exclusive access generally allows for each corporate member to visit once or twice per year.

For the remainder of the year, organizations, university students and youth groups that focus on historic preservation, wildlife, hunting or other related topics typically reserve time at the lodge for a fee.

The DNR hosts an annual open house at the lodge in September, the “one day a year” that McKay mentioned.

This past summer, the department also started offering guided tours of the property.

John Griffin, who was the DNR deputy secretary when the state purchased Woodmont property and the department’s secretary when the current lease began, wrote in an email that state’s agreement included making the hunting grounds the public when the club members weren’t using the property.

He added, though, that “there were criticisms from time to time from area hunting groups and others who wanted access to all the property all year.”

Who should have access?

The status of the Woodmont property and the state’s lease with the Izaak Walton League weren’t high on the priority list for DNR officials until McKay raised the issue last month.

The department hasn’t received constituent complaints or noticed glaring issues at the property to prompt conversations about a lease that won’t expire for another four years.

“We didn’t have this on our radar as, I guess, potentially problematic,” said Paul Peditto, the department’s assistant secretary for land resources. “That kind of put our radar up.”

Questions about public access to the property certainly aren’t new, and state officials in years past were particularly wary of the potential for the club to discriminate in its membership decisions.

During a 1997 meeting, then-Gov. Parris Glendening commented that the Izaak Walton League had “always been a fairly exclusive organization,” prompting discussion about the extent to which the Woodmont chapter would be part of the organization’s push to include more than just white men in public hunting.

“It’s a work in progress, governor,” Griffin, then the DNR’s deputy secretary, said during the meeting, according to a transcript.

The issue came up again when the state approved the current lease in 2010, prompting one official to request a statement from the department and the Izaak Walton League about whether access and use by women and people of color had changed.

“Many of us had concerns originally having to do basically with exclusivity. And with the history of some groups regarding minorities and women,” said former state Treasurer Nancy Kopp.

Mike Worden, who manages the property with his wife, Linda, said he wrote the statement that Kopp requested years ago and notified the treasurer that the club doesn’t discriminate against any group for any reason, and that its members and guests have included women and people of color.

Each local chapter of the Izaak Walton League independently determines how to manage its membership, and the Woodmont club only accepts corporate members.

The process to join Woodmont is an informal one. The club doesn’t advertise, so most people become interested after visiting as a guest of a member.

Each business and firm has five host members, at least one of whom must be present for stays at the property.

Whether to accept new members is largely dependent on the property’s availability. During the six-month period of exclusive access, there are typically members visiting the lodge every day but Wednesday, which the Wordens use to regroup and restock for the next group.

Maintaining a full schedule is necessary, as 98% of the revenue for staffing and maintaining the property is made during that period. The rest comes from event fees during the off-season. Woodmont members commit to covering any budget shortfalls, which may arise from winter storms keeping visitors away.

With an annual budget of roughly $800,000 and 30 or so members, each firm or business pays an average of nearly $26,700 in annual dues to cover staffing and maintenance at the lodge. The club budgets to break even.

“It’s a really good example of a public-private partnership,” Keener said.

Certainly not everyone is convinced that it’s the best use of the property.

Bill Valentine, a Washington County commissioner from 2010 to 2018, compared the agreement to the state paying to repair someone’s home for them, saying it “sounded like a bit of a sweetheart deal.”

It doesn’t seem right to the former commissioner that hunting and fishing on state land is reserved for members of the club for half the year.

“It’s a very high-dollar, private resort funded by the state taxpayers, really,” he said.

David Smith, a Hancock resident who used to be the town manager, said he can see why people would see the arrangement as “a deal for the rich guys.”

Smith grew up around Woodmont and has maintained the connection, overseeing an agreement in which his employer, Fairview Orchards, leases about 600 acres of hunting land to the club.

Smith describes himself as someone who is “not a big government fan at all,” but he said the DNR’s partnership with the Woodmont chapter has been a unique opportunity to preserve forest land, 150 years of history and the club’s heritage.

“They did the right thing for once,” he said of the state government. “It was a good deal for everyone.”

Will it continue?

Keener, the club president, said he had been in contact with the DNR a few years ago about extending the lease but stopped hearing back around the time that the state administrations changed over.

Still, he’s been under the impression that the department is “anxious to continue the relationship” because it’s worked well for the state, for the public and for the Woodmont club.

Peditto said the Woodmont club is “still a viable tenant” and that the mostly new executive team at the DNR under the Gov. Wes Moore administration is “still getting to know all of our tenants.”

Peditto said an agreement between the DNR and the Woodmont membership that includes more public access to the lease area “would be a fair thing for us to contemplate, particularly given the chapter’s overarching purpose.”

With just a few years left on the lease, Mike Worden said the Woodmont club has been in a bit of a limbo state. Some businesses that recently looked into joining are hesitant to commit to paying annual fees so close to the lease’s end.

The Wordens said they’re praying the state and the club will extend their agreement. They’d like to see someone else continue their work once they retire.

“I don’t really have any set time frame, just playing things by ear,” Mike Worden said of his retirement plans. “That could be decided for me.”