Rocky Gap State Park

About this park

Rocky Gap State Park covers 3,000 acres in Allegany County, situated among the Central Appalachians, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, just east of Cumberland in far western Maryland. The park centers on 243-acre Lake Habeeb, named for local florist Edward Habeeb, who helped initiate the park's creation; the lake was formed by an Army Corps of Engineers dam completed in 1970, and the park formally opened in 1974. Lake Habeeb is locally famous for having some of the bluest, clearest water in the state, and its 9.4-mile shoreline includes three public beach areas along with a healthy fishery. Rocky Gap Run itself winds through a dramatic mile-long gorge below Evitts Mountain, flanked by sheer cliffs, scenic overlooks, and a dense hemlock forest thick with rhododendron and mountain laurel, giving the park some of the more rugged mountain scenery found anywhere in the Maryland system. Unusually for a Maryland state park, Rocky Gap shares its grounds with the privately operated Rocky Gap Casino Resort, developed by the state's economic development arm in 1998 and later awarded a casino license in 2012, making this the only Maryland state park with a full-service resort hotel and casino directly on-site alongside the standard public camping, hiking, and swimming areas the Maryland Park Service manages. That unusual public-private arrangement gives Rocky Gap a genuinely different character from any other park in the state, blending rustic mountain camping with resort-level amenities just steps away.