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Map of Montgomery County

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Once one of Maryland’s chief agricultural areas, Montgomery County (pop 2005 est. 927,583; 2000 873,341) has become one of its most urban, primarily because it is a residential suburb of Washington.

History
When English settlers first reached Maryland in 1634, members of the Piscataway Confederation lived in the area that later became Montgomery County.  As the colonists spread up the Potomac River in the late 1600s, they came into closer proximity with the Piscataways, who chose to move north rather than confront the settlers.  In 1695, the colonial assembly established Prince George’s County, encompassing present-day Montgomery County as well as areas further west.  By 1748, as the population became denser, the assembly carved Frederick County out of Prince George’s County.  In 1776, the legislature created Montgomery County out of the lower portion of Frederick County, naming it for the heroic Revolutionary War soldier, General Richard Montgomery (1738-1775), killed in the abortive American attack on Quebec. 

Tobacco
During the colonial period, the area that became Montgomery County initially featured small farms and plantations that grew tobacco and corn.  Some farmers shifted to wheat later in the colonial period.  While most free white males worked the fields, Maryland’s economy also relied on forced labor. Slaves were present from relatively early in the region’s history, when the source of that labor shifted from white indentured servants to African slaves in the late 1600s.  Georgetown began to grow as a port in the 1700s, exporting tobacco and wheat from throughout Maryland’s backcountry.

Montgomery County remained primarily agricultural throughout the antebellum period, but tobacco virtually disappeared as a crop.  The worn-out soil simply could not support a demanding crop such as tobacco.  The Quakers in Sandy Spring led the way in practicing scientific agriculture, relying on crop rotation and fertilizers, such as Peruvian guano, to restore the soil.  Wheat, corn, and oats became the major crops grown, and livestock and dairying became important as well.

In 1774, patriots in the future Montgomery County gathered at Hungerford’s tavern and drafted the Hungerford Resolves to protest the Intolerable Acts that Britain passed to punish the colonists for the Boston Tea Party.  Two years later, the village surrounding Hungerford’s tavern became the seat of the newly-established Montgomery County; today, the village—much grown—is known as Rockville.

When Congress proposed building the nation’s capital along the Potomac River in 1791, Maryland contributed 36 square miles of Montgomery County, including the prosperous port of Georgetown, to help form the District of Columbia—a proximity to the nation’s capital that, subsequently, has deeply affected Montgomery County.

The Underground Railroad and the Civil War
While Montgomery County continued to have slaves in the years just before the Civil War, changes in agriculture made “the peculiar institution” less important.  The county’s proximity to the free state of Pennsylvania gave it an important role in the Underground Railroad; slaves secretly used the series of houses and other buildings to escape to freedom.  Historians estimate Montgomery County may have had as many as 15 stops on the Underground Railroad.  Despite the declining role of slavery, it was a slave from Montgomery County, Josiah Henson, who became the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

During the Civil War, Montgomery County, like most of Maryland, was badly split in its loyalties.  Many of its sons crossed the Potomac to enlist in the Confederate army, but even more ended up in the Union Army.  Federal troops entered the county in order to protect Washington, D.C.  Armies on both sides crossed the county on their way to battles elsewhere.  Indeed, the armies fought the bloodiest one-day battle of the war at Sharpsburg on Antietam Creek, just west of Montgomery County.  However, the county itself saw only a few skirmishes and otherwise just suffered the plundering of supplies by soldiers.

Post-War Suburbanization
After the Civil War, Montgomery County began its transformation into a Washington suburb.  The construction of the Metropolitan Branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and, later, a streetcar route from Washington provided the impetus for the building of suburbs in the late nineteenth century.  Takoma Park, Garrett Park, Kensington, and Chevy Chase all were established in this period as suburbs, while Glen Echo and Forest Glen became resorts for Washingtonians seeking relief from the summer heat. Suburbanization accelerated throughout the twentieth century, growing noticeably with the two world wars and the post-World War II boom. 

At first, the trend towards suburbanization led to a homogenizing of the population in the mid-twentieth century.  By the late twentieth century, however, Montgomery County became an ethnically and economically diverse region.  The southeastern part of the county, particularly Silver Spring and Wheaton, saw major influxes of Hispanics and Asians, and the African American population grew tremendously after declining earlier in the century.

Government
In 1968, Montgomery County’s voters adopted a County Executive-County Council form of government.  Nine elected members sit on the Council. Five are elected from specific districts; four are elected countywide. The Council members and the County Executive all serve four-year terms. The Council President and Vice President are selected by the Council from its members, and each serves for one year.

Geography
Montgomery County is located north of the District of Columbia, and borders Prince George's County on the east. It borders Howard County on the northeast and Frederick County on the northwest. The Potomac River runs along the southwest of Montgomery County, marking the county's border with Virginia. The county is situated on the southwestern end of the Piedmont Plateau, a section of land stretching northeast from the tip of the Potomac River at the foot of the Catoctin Mountains.  The land throughout the county is hilly.

Industry
Federal employment replaced farming as the occupation of most Montgomery County workers post-World War II.  The county became home to many federal agencies, including the National Naval Medical Center and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, and the Food and Drug Administration in Rockville. 

In the second half of the twentieth century, the transportation network continued to play an important role in dictating development, with the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270 being the most important roads and the Washington Metro subway system becoming a major determinant of growth.  At the same time, the area along Interstate 270 became known as a high-tech corridor, as defense, biotechnology, and other research-based companies established facilities there.  Major corporations with headquarters in the County include Marriott International, Lockheed Martin, and Discovery Communications.

Education
Montgomery County had only private schools until the establishment of public schools for white students in 1860.  After the Civil War, in 1872, the state of Maryland required that Montgomery County start public schools for black students, thus establishing segregated schools.  After the Supreme Court ended school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Montgomery County began desegregating of its schools, completing the task by 1958.  By the late twentieth century, the county’s public school system was one of the largest and most highly regarded in the nation.

Montgomery College, originally established for World War II veterans, has campuses at Takoma Park, Rockville, and Germantown.  The county also contains the Montgomery County Center of Johns Hopkins University, a satellite campus offering courses tailored to the Montgomery County area. It also is home to the Universities at Shady Grove, a four-year public university formed in 2000 as a collaboration of eight of the University System of Maryland universities.

Historic Site
Rock Creek Park, located north of Washington, D.C., the oldest urban park in the national park system, was established in 1890. It contains as many as 1,700 acres of wilderness and is home to many wild animals, including coyotes. Here, the history of the lands surrounding Washington can be seen, from remains of the settlements of the Piscataway Indians to old Civil War forts.

—Maryland Online Encyclopediae

Baltimore, Md.