Booth’s Escape

Overview

Travel the escape route John Wilkes Booth took as he fled Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. after assassinating President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The byway travels from Washington, D.C. to Popes Creek on the Potomac River in southern Maryland. Learn the history of Mary Surrat in her 1820 middle-class rooming house in Clinton. Mary was part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. Continue the journey to Waldorf at the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House Museum, the home of Dr. Mudd who treated John Wilkes Booth for a broken leg. Bryantown’s St. Mary Church and Cemetery is the final resting place of Dr. Mudd. Allow time in Port Tobacco to see the 1819 reconstructed courthouse museum containing tobacco and Civil War exhibits as it is part of the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site. As with most Maryland Byways, bring binoculars and comfortable clothes to bird-watch and hike along the way at the many wetlands and nature areas along the byway.