This stretch of U.S. 40 in Garrett County includes an artisan village, a stone bridge and a restaurant with a lot of character
June 17, 2014 | By Jonathan Pitts, The Baltimore Sun
GRANTSVILLE — — In a cabin built in the 1750s, just a few hundred feet from a 201-year-old stone bridge across the quiet Casselman River, a man sits at a slab of a wooden table, an array of carving tools spread before him.
The rush of traffic from nearby Alternate U.S. 40, also known as Route 40, does not bother Gary Yoder. Nor does the “thump-thump-thump” of the weaving loom from the cabin next door.
The most celebrated crafter of wooden bird sculptures in Western Maryland is too engrossed to notice.
“What I do is more like an addiction than a career — a healthy one, I hope,” he says, glancing up from a hawk feather he’s carving from a piece of basswood.
Yoder has been practicing his craft at the Spruce Forest Artisans Village — a cluster of working artists’ studios a mile from downtown Grantsville — for 42 of his 55 years.
