I never thought I’d be relieved to find myself biking in an industrial park.

But after dodging traffic on busy Boston Street, it was so calm and pleasant in the Holabird Business Park that it might as well have been the Loire Valley.

That was the start of my morning Tour du Port bike ride yesterday – and it just kept getting better after that.

How is it that after all these years of living and biking in Baltimore, I have not gone on Tour du Port?

I don’t know. I’m just glad my friend Jennifer Bishop grabbed me and got me to join her.

As everyone knows (or if you don’t, I’ll quickly tell you) this is the annual ride to benefit Bike Maryland that showcases everything from local historical sites to old-time Baltimore neighborhoods to post-industrial toxic landscapes.

We got some of each, plus some pretty natural scenery, on the ride we chose out of the four available – the 31-mile “Port to Peninsula” route.

Industrial and Post



If you want to burn calories and get a crash course in Baltimore’s industrial history, this is the tour for you.

There was the hulking abandoned Seagrams distillery on Sollers Point Road in Dundalk, covered with graffiti and awaiting (apparently) demolition and a transformation into 187 townhouses.

Also massive, but new and thriving, was the Amazon warehouse on Broening Highway.

(Could someone who works there please tell me if it’s true what I’ve heard: that you are supposed to box something every 10 seconds?)

There were neat-as-a-pin neighborhoods where you could hear the sound of backyard man-caves cranking up with pre-Ravens game coverage and catch the scent of pre-game meat grilling.

At historic North Point Park, we could look out on the windswept Patapsco River and munch the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples and bananas provided by tour organizers.

And beyond all that, we whizzed through open country (fields of soybeans, their brown pods looking ready to harvest) and patches of dense forest at the Black Marsh Natural Area.

From the end of Cuckold Point Road, you can get a good view of Hart-Miller Island. Back at Canton Waterfront Park there were food trucks dispensing burgers and bibimbap and frosty cans of Fat Tire amber ale.

A Flattened Sparrows

Looming large, though, on this ride was a chance to get a look at what remains of a place The Brew has covered extensively in its final years, the steel mill at Sparrows Point.

Our route took us right behind the site of the old 68-inch strip mill and tinplate complex. Where grime-covered structures once spewed out endless coils of razor-thin steel today lies a plateau of weeds and bush bisected by railroad sidings.

The rail access has been preserved by the new owners, Sparrows Point Terminal LLC, for the peninsula’s re-purposing as an “advanced manufacturing” assembly area fed by semi-finished products coming from harborside docks that once handled boats bearing iron ore from Labrador and Venezuela.

“The Point” operated for over 120 years until its longtime owner, Bethlehem Steel, went bankrupt and a series of opportunistic operators failed to stem the plant’s losses.

In May 2012, RG Steel declared bankruptcy, 2,000 employees were dismissed and the property was sold to Midwest salvage operators.

The latest owner, a group controlled by Jim Davis, a cousin and former business partner of Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, has high hopes for a new era at “The Point” as a manufacturing and distribution hub.

Having lost most of its steel underpinnings, the peninsula is now undergoing environmental remediation – yet another metamorphosis of the Baltimore harborfront that our bike-eye view made up-front and personal yesterday.

– Mark Reutter contributed to this story.