Greenbrier State Park

We stayed here for a week while visiting some of the historic sites in the area as well as Annapolis for a Navy football game.

The park is well maintained with good spacing. We stayed in the Dogwood loop with no electric or water. We have solar, but due to trees didnt bring a ton in so did have to use the generator one day to recharge which is allowed between 8am and 10pm. Water was easily accessible at multiple sites throughout each loop. The showers were clean, hot & had great water pressure. The campground is gated with electronic code access. Our site was very level pea gravel with a picnic table, fire pit, and trash hangers. Most sites we looks at seemed mostly level and shaded as well. Camp hosts on Dogwood were super friendly and informative.

The park has a small beach on the
lake which would be nice in season & some really nice trails which we used for daily trail running. There is also a connector trail to the AT. From our campsite, it was about an 8.5 mile hike to Annapolis Rock which I would recommend for anyone who likes hiking.

This was a great access point for hiking some miles on the AT and other trails in the area, as well as visiting Gettysburg, Catoctin Mountain, Annapolis, and Harpers Ferry.

This was a beautiful area with easy access to a lot of historical sites & we would definitely stay at this park again when we make it back.

We pretty much traveled the back roads from Powhatan, Virginia to Greenbrier State Park in Maryland. Though the entire 161-mile drive was gorgeous, the section of State Hwy 709 (otherwise known as Zulla Road) was stupendous. The winding roads, old barns, rolling fields, horses, gothic antique structures, hand-built stone walls and fences, little hamlets, were just amazing.

This campground is huge. Too large and populated for our tastes. Over five hundred sites. There are only two loops that are dog friendly. No dogs are allowed at the beach or in the common areas. On weekends there are thousands of people enjoying this park. The traffic can be horrendous. The entrance to the park can only be traversed from the right side. We had to make an (illegal?) U-turn just to get into the park. Seems they were only allowing registered campers into the filled-to-capacity state park. Their mammoth parking lot was full of weekend funseekers.

The paved campground roads are a bit too narrow for big rigs and many sites have tents on them. Our site #C-83 was in the Cedar Loop and in my opinion is the best one of all. Three bars of AT&T 5-G. No water on site but a spigot is directly across the street. However, no place to fill up the rig except for the dump station and that allows only one single RV at a time. I can’t imagine how backed-up that is on Sundays. We were here for three nights and the average cost was $31 per night. The site is on a hill and very private.

The state park is in Boonsboro, Maryland which is a very charming town with plenty of food and gas available. Nearby in West Virginia is the best authentic historic town of all and is called Shepherdstown overlooking the Potomac River. The Historic Shepherdstown Museum outlines the town's origins and Civil War history. Harper’s Ferry is about twenty-two miles south from here. The traffic was again backed-up from both directions coming into the town on the Saturday after the 4th of July 2023 as we were making our way up from Powhatan. Our wish was to visit the historic site of many important Civil War skirmishes, not to mention the abolitionist John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry which by some accounts started everything after he was tried and hanged for treason, murder, and insurrection. Even closer to our campground to the southwest in nearby Sharpsburg, Maryland, was the site of the bloodiest Civil War battle that happened on the Antietam National Battlefield. Time did not permit us to visit the Gettysburg Battleground and Eisenhower Farm situated a bit further northeast, but this state park sits in the middle of all three so options do exist.

We spent only one night at Greenbrier SP in the Cedar Loop site C91. Spaces are fairly well spaced and well wooded but the CG is pretty hilly. Most sites seem fairly level, although ours was about 6” low in the back, but the approach to the pad will likely be up or down hill. The bathrooms were a bit dated but well kept and clean. Staff were very friendly and helpful. All in all I would rate this CG about 4 ½ and will definitely consider this for a longer stay if we have the chance.

Full time camper, 21’ Ford Transit Van DIY conversion.
Greenbrier Campground sits in the woods in a hollow surrounded by hills. I stayed the last weekend of Spring vacation week before going up to Gettysburg National Battlefield Park. The Park was convenient to that end and the 45 minute drive up to Gettysburg was scenically beautiful.
Camping is a good opportunity for families with young children to spend quality, healthy and memorable time together and I appreciate that fact. Because this campground is in a hollow, sound is amplified into lots of noise. Babies crying, children screaming, dogs barking,etc. was nerve wracking. The sites are open and fairly close together.
I looked into the bathhouse and decided not to use it, but the showers are hot.
I hiked the Camp Loop Trail and a section of the Red Trail which was rocky and rooty along a ridge with a steep incline.
Very nice, friendly camp hosts will greet you.

Greenbrier State Park has 4 camping loops in the mountains between Frederick and Hagerstown, MD. Easy access to either city as well as some nearby state parks with civil war history attached to them. The Appalachian trail also runs nearby. The park itself has 4 camping loops and they are segregated from the remainder of the park by a narrow coded gate. One loop has electricity and the others have no services. Dogs are only allowed in two of the loops, including the electric loop. The electricity was solid even when the campground appeared full. Water spigots are spread throughout the campground, but are not at the site, so you should fill up before settling in. The roads in the camp loops are narrow and wind around to follow the uneven terrain so you'll want to go slow. You will also want to choose your site carefully because of the terrain. Nearly all of the sites are in full shade. In the Cedar Loop (electric) some sites were never going to be level for an RV more than 20 feet in length and it was difficult to see how you could back in given the narrow winding roads. Best luck for a larger RV is likely to be at the front of the loop rather than the back section (99 was a fine site). The camping pads themselves were well constructed with crushed rock bounded by wooden ties. Nice picnic tables and fire rings.

The dump station is problematic for larger RVs because of its positioning right before the narrow exit gate from the campground. You will see the scars on the bollards of the RVs that couldn't make the turn. I would recommend looping around through the campground again to get a straight shot at the exit gate. The dump station is a very unpleasant design with access and a funnel design to the sewer inlet. I've seen worse, but this is one to remember.

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day dogs are not allowed in the park except for in the two dog-friendly campground loops. You'll want to keep this in mind if you have a dog that requires a substantial bit of exercise.Also we discovered that on many summer weekends the park reaches capacity and they turn visitors away. Not an issue if you are a camper, but if you are expecting friends to visit for the day you may want to keep this in mind.

Beautiful state park with a small lake near some great hiking. The campground is well cared for and very clean. Several nice trails in the park can be accessed from the campground. The lake and beach area are a short walk from campground and are very nice but get extremely crowded on warm weekends. Camp hosts take great care of the sites and everything is very clean. Site are a bit close together but there are enough trees to feel fairly private. The only downsides to the campground are somewhat narrow turns that might be tough for a larger RV and a lack of dumpsters (one dumpster area all the way by the dump station)
Overall this is without a doubt one of the best state parks we have visited!

This may be the cleanest state park we’ve stayed at in any park. The site gravel was raked, the fire pit was cleaned. Bathrooms were clean. We were here on a September Sunday and walked in day of and got a spot for $28 (paid extra since we were not MD residents). Campground was mostly empty.
AT&T service was strong enough to stream NFL Sunday ticket ;) ... so that was a bonus! Park very quiet and close to the I-70.

Two notes, there is an alcohol ban unless inside your RV. And only two of the four camp loops are pet friendly. If you bring your pooch, you need the Cedar or Deadwood loops.

Greenbrier State Park is an exemplary state park. It is a beautifully developed park with a great mix of front and back country. All of the facilities and ground are meticulously taken care of. The park has a huge swimming and picnicking area as well as a hiking trails and a visitor center. It very much sets an example for other state parks.

The greatness of Greenbrier does not stop at the swimming and picnic areas either. The campgrounds are also well taken care of and scenic. While there are not full hookups, there is electrical which is very nice at this price point. It is a great state park campground.

I stayed at Greenbrier one night on the tail end of a national park road trip and I found myself incredibly impressed by my stay at the campground.

We used the senior golden age pass Sun - Thurs to get 1/2 price camping late Sept 2019. We booked Cedar electric loop site 18 (now #81) with water very close by. Very private, roomy and level. When backed in, there is no one to your left and only site 83 to your right. Next stay we will book #83 which is elevated and we feel would be a little bit more private, by backing further in to be away from the road and your outside living area would not even see site 81 below. These are the only 2 sites that we preferred which we felt were the most private. Nice walk to the restroom and showers. Showers worked great, restrooms were very clean. Dump station pull off near the campground exit. We rode to the beach which was very nice. We are now staying at Greenbrier instead of Cunningham Falls because of being much closer in travel to Hagerstown which we frequent for antique shopping. A nice ride into Boonsboro which is a nice little town. A must stop is Vesta Pizzeria! Great subs and pizza.

If you don’t camp with dogs, this is a great place. Despite them having dog friendly loops, they aren’t really dog friendly, which is what is keeping us from giving them 5 out 5.

The sites are fairly level but very nicely maintained. They are a bit smaller than we’d like as we spend a fair amount of time outside. The picnic tables look new and the fire rings are big. They are also fairly shady and spread out. We definitely didn’t feel like we were on top of our neighbors. They highly encourage you to fill your water at the entrance where the dump station is but only encourage that when you’re blocking the road to fill up before you back in to your spot. The park was also full of poison ivy, oak, and sumac so we didn’t feel comfortable using many of the trails or walking the dogs around the loop.

As for the dog friendly part. While they have two dog friendly loops, like all Maryland State Parks, this one has felt the least dog friendly. There is only one dog wasted receptacle and it’s by the bathrooms so we didn’t find it for awhile. There are none on any of the trails and no waste baskets so that made walking not very fun. Also, dogs aren’t allowed ANYWHERE but the dog loops and trails. Not the welcome gate, day-use areas, etc. This made us feel super unwelcome especially because we couldn’t even walk the trail around the lake since dogs couldn’t even be on the sidewalk in the day use area. They couldn’t stress it enough - “not even in the parking lot”. We have a larger dog who loves to hike and swim so the fact that she couldn’t even do that here is the main reason we won’t return. I’m sure with a small dog it wouldn’t be as much of an issue but we wanted to make sure we let people know as we didn’t read anything about the pet situation prior to booking.