Gwynns Falls Leakin Park

Gwynns Falls - Leakin Park
aka Leakin Park or Gwynns Falls Park
Orianda Mansion ("Crimea") in Gwynns Falls-Leakin Park
Location	Baltimore, Maryland
Coordinates	39°18′23″N 76°41′27″W / 39.30639°N 76.69083°W / 39.30639; -76.69083Coordinates: 39°18′23″N 76°41′27″W / 39.30639°N 76.69083°W / 39.30639; -76.69083
Area	1,216 acres (492 ha)
Created	1908
Operated by	Baltimore City Department of Parks and Recreation

The adjoining Gwynns Falls Park and Leakin Park, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, generally referred to as "Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park," covers 1,216 acres (492 ha) of contiguous parkland, forming the most extensive park in the city. Gwynns Falls-Leakin is a wilderness, heavily forested and largely left in its natural state, somewhat like Herring Run, but unlike other large urban parks in Baltimore city such as Druid Hill or Patterson, which have some tree cover, with open meadows and mowed lawns in between. Baltimore's Department of Recreation and Parks operates Gwynns Falls and Leakin as a single park, beginning at the western edge of the city, following the Gwynns Falls stream from Windsor Mill Road (northwest) to Wilkens Avenue (southeast).

Franklintown Road serves as the main vehicular route through the park, as a continuation of Dogwood Road from the Baltimore County suburb of Woodlawn. It exits the park near West Lafayette Avenue further into the city.

Although surrounded by an urban environment, some areas of the park are so heavily wooded that they give the impression of wilderness. Portions of the 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project were filmed here. The combination of its many secluded areas and easy vehicular access has in the past given it a reputation, in Baltimore and beyond, as a place where bodies of murder victims are frequently found. In the early 2010s the park began efforts to change that by barricading many dead-end access roads from high-crime neighborhoods adjacent to it.

The properties which eventually became Gwynns Falls Park started with a small parcel of land southwest of Edmondson Avenue, selected by the Baltimore City government in 1901 to serve as a park, anticipating the needs of a growing population. In their plan for the "Greater Baltimore Public Grounds," prepared for the Baltimore Municipal Arts Society in 1904, the Olmsted Brothers recommended acquiring land along the Gwynns Falls for a stream valley park.