"Gateway to the Alleghenies" a Cumberland Travel Page by yooperprof

If you're heading out of D.C. toward West Virginia, Cumberland is a good place to stop, take a rest, stretch your feet. It's the first substantial town heading westward on I-68 past Hagerstown. Yes, it has all the expected places right off the interstate, but it also has a fairly interesting and historic town center.

In the 1980s the solution for all small town woes was to construct "pedestrian malls" in downtown areas. Cumberland's is typical, and not really any more or less successful than most. Undoubtedly, they've done a good job with designing the streetlamps and the planted, but it's very difficult to work against the grain of an auto-obsessed culture.