By Kevin Williams
One of the most peaceful and beautiful Amish communities I've ever been to is the sprawling settlement in extreme western Maryland. That place was on my "Amish bucket list" for a long time and I was thrilled to get to go a couple of years back. I won't rehash my earlier posts about Oakland, you can read my main piece here. But I will say that Oakland is one of the more "open" Amish communities that you'll find. They are generally horse and buggy Amish (But they also use large, talking John Deere on steroids, tractors for transportation), but they different from other communities in that they have a formal church building and don't fellowship with other Amish settlements. It's an old, old district, a large district, and, again, generally very welcoming to outsiders. At least two converts live there.
I wrote a piece for The Guardian about the community, which you can read here.
At the time I posted a lot of photos on this website and in the Guardian but I stumbled across a whole bunch of them that I never had posted and I thought these are too good not to share, so enjoy another look at Oakland, Maryland!
A glass of homemade spearmint tea...yes, that is one of my books it is sitting on...I brought a copy to show my Amish friends and I didn't want to leave a ring on their table,so....
Swan Meadow School is a public school, K-8, but the student population is almost all Amish.
A wonderful Amish bakery outside Oakland.
Amish convert Christina Cortez joined the church several years ago, she expressed an interest in possibly moving on to a more conservative community. The Amish here are much more permissive with photography.
Hitching post - a long, long, long one - outside of the Amish church in Oakland.
The bucolic countryside of western Maryland near the state's highest point.
Curtis Duff tends to his flock
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