A Little Bethesda History
from William Offutt's Bethesda - A Social History
"But it was
improvements in transportation that really changed the
County. The old road that led through Bethesda to George-
town had limited what County farmers could grow and to whom
they could sell. Then, in historically rapid succession,
came the turnpike era followed by the canal building epoch
and the railroad's ascendancy. By the middle of the 19th
century, Montgomery County farmers could reach many
different markets and had access to a much wider world of
knowledge as well as trade.
Even then,
Bethesda was still barely a village. It would take one more
transportation revolution before the suburbs emerged. After
all, until the Civil War, many "considered the Capital to be
just another small, muddy Maryland town with some extra-wide
streets and a seasonal and highly transient population of
out-of-town lawyers living in rooming houses.
Congress
authorized the National Road, the eastern section of which
became US 40, in 1806 as part of what would later be called
the American System of internal improvements. This pike,
most often called the Cumberland Road, was to connect the
Ohio County to the East, and the already existing road from
Fredericktown to Georgetown was to link up with this first
national highway. Despite recessions, bankruptcies,
Presidential vetoes, and another war with England, the road
from Cumberland to Wheeling opened by 1819 and the section
to Baltimore in 1825."
