The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum is now part of the national commemoration of the Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape to freedom before the Civil War, added to the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom.
The museum is located in what was the Mt. Clare station, the B&O’s first passenger station. Its designation as an Underground Railroad Site is based on documents showing at least eight escaping slaves passed through it, including Henry “Box” Brown, who made his escape hidden in a shipping container labled as dry goods.
A National Endowment for the Humanities grant is helping the museum create a new permanent exhibit that will share the stories of the freedom seekers’ ingenuity as well as the role the physical railroad played in the Underground Railroad examining in particular the actions of the B&O Railroad.
The museum itself is a Smithsonian affiliate. It has some of the oldest and most comprehensive collections of railroad history in the U.S., including oral archives of the history of African-American in American railroading.
