On the Trail - Clifton Park - Baltimore, Maryland

On the Trail - Clifton Park - Baltimore, Maryland a photo by litlesam on Flickr.

Last year I was taking photographs around Baltimore of various monuments and memorials.  Baltimore is known as the Monumental City due to the number of monuments within the city.  Some are well known but many are obscure.   Clifton Park is home of "On the Trail," a 7'4" bronze sculpture of an American Indian by Edward Berge.  Berge is from Maryland and has several other statues in the city.  The statue in Clifton Park was created by him at the Rodan School in Paris.  The statue is difficult to find if you are not sure where to look for it.  It is hidden in Clifton Park on the north east side of Baltimore.  It is within a golf course and standing in tall weeds near the road.  You can drive right by it and not see it if you are not aware that its there.  He does seem a little out of place here, lost in a golf course.

When I was a child I went to the Salvation Army Camp Tomahawk in Martinsburg, W. Va.  At the camp we ate all of our meals in a small quanset hut.  After each meal we were encourage to clean up the plates at our table by singing the song "Where or where is big chief Tomahawk?"  The table with the cleanest stack of dishes was awarded a small statue of Chief Tomahawk which remained at the table until the next meal. 

When I was in high school our school team was the Havre de Grace Warriors.  We also had a girls marching group for parades and football games called The Warriorettes.  The girls would wear short American Indian styled dresses and feathers in a head dress. 

It was a more innocent time back then. Before the days of political corretness we never thought there was any harm in these things.  Today these concepts seem about as out of place as an Indian in a golf course.