In Mayor & City Council of Balt. v. State, Use of Ahrens, 168 Md. 619, 179 A. 169 (1935), the Court held that the City of Baltimore was not liable for the drowning death of a boy at Gwynns Fall Park, because the maintenance and operation of the park was a governmental function. The Court explained, 168 Md. at 628: In these days of advanced civilization, in a period when the unfortunate tendency of many is to abandon the countryside - the haunts of their own youth - and thereby add to the already over congested metropolitan areas, public city parks are almost as necessary for the preservation of the public health as is pure water. In a word, to hold municipalities liable in damages, under circumstances such as are revealed in the instant case, would be against public policy, because it would retard the expansion and development of parking systems, in and around our growing cities, and stifle a gratuitous governmental activity vitally necessary to the health, contentment, and happiness of their inhabitants. Our conclusion, therefore, is that the maintenance, control, and operation of Gwynns Falls Park, by the appellant, is a governmental duty, discretionary in its nature, performed in its political and governmental capacity as an agency of the State.