Bethesda Maryland History & Facts

Bethesda is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda. The National Institutes of Health's main campus and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center are in Bethesda, in addition to a number of corporate and government headquarters.

As an unincorporated community, Bethesda has no official boundaries. According to the 2020 United States census, the community had a total population of 68,056.

Bethesda is located in a region that was populated by the Piscataway and Nacotchtank tribes at the time of European colonization. Fur trader Henry Fleet became the first European to visit the area, reaching it by sailing up the Potomac River. He stayed with the Piscataway tribe from 1623 to 1627, either as a guest or prisoner (historical accounts differ). Fleet eventually secured funding for another expedition to the region and was later granted proprietary rights to 2,000 acres of land in the nascent colony and became a member of Maryland’s colonial legislature. Raids from the Senecas and Susquehannock resulted in the creation of the Maryland division of Rangers in 1694 to patrol the frontier.

Most settlers in colonial Maryland were tenant farmers who paid their rent in tobacco, and colonists continued to expand farther north in search of fertile land. Henry Darnall (1645–1711) surveyed a 710-acre (290-hectare) area in 1694 which became the first land grant in Bethesda. Tobacco farming was the primary way of life in Bethesda throughout the 1700s. The city avoided seeing action during the Revolutionary War, although it became a supply region for the fledgling Continental Navy. The establishment of Washington, D.C. in 1790 deprived Montgomery County of its economic center at Georgetown, although the event had little effect on the small farmers throughout Bethesda.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 13.2 square miles (34 km2), of which 13.1 square miles (34 km2) is land and 0.1 square miles (0.26 km2) (0.38%) is water.

The main commercial corridor that passes through Bethesda is Maryland Route 355 (known as Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda and as Rockville Pike and Hungerford Drive in more northern communities), which, to the north, connects Bethesda with the communities of North Bethesda and Rockville, ending, after several name changes, in Frederick. Toward the South, Rockville Pike becomes Wisconsin Avenue near the NIH Campus and continues beyond Bethesda through Chevy Chase, Friendship Heights and into Washington, D.C., ending in Georgetown.

The area commonly known as "Downtown Bethesda" is centered at the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue, Old Georgetown Road and East-West Highway. This intersection is approximately two and one-half miles from Washington, DC's western boundary, making Bethesda a close-in suburb of Washington. Other focal points of downtown Bethesda include the Woodmont Triangle, bordered by Old Georgetown Road (Maryland Route 187), Woodmont and Rugby Avenues, and the Bethesda Row, centered at the intersection of Woodmont Avenue and Bethesda Avenue. Much of the dense construction in that area followed the opening of the Bethesda station on the Red Line of the Washington Metro rapid transit system, also located at this intersection and the centerpiece of the Bethesda Metro Center development. The Medical Center Metro stop lies approximately 0.7 miles north of the Bethesda stop, Medical Center, which serves the NIH Campus, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Famous Peoples From Bethesda Maryland

Deborah Ager

founded the poetry magazine known as 32 poems or 32 Poems Magazine in 2003 with the poet John Poch. She was educated at the University of Maryland (B.A.) and the University of Florida (M.F.A.).

She has published three books. She co-edited the anthologies Old Flame: 10 Years of 32 Poems Magazine (2012) with John Poch and Bill Beverly and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (2013) with M. E. Silverman.

Her writing has appeared in New England Review, The Georgia Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Barn Pony, North American Review, and Best New Poets 2006. She has received fellowships and/or scholarships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She was a Walter E. Dakin fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference as well as a Tennessee Williams Scholar.

Her manuscript Midnight Voices was a semifinalist for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize in 2007 before being accepted for publication by Cherry Grove Collections.

She serves on the advisory board for A.I.R. Studio Paducah. In the past, she served on the board of 32 poems magazine and on the editorial board of Redux Magazine. Ager is a former co-director of the Joaquin Miller Cabin poetry reading series in Washington, DC, which takes place in Rock Creek Park.

Ager is also an essayist, with nonfiction writing published in Narratively, The Week, and Modern Loss.

We also serve Baltimore City.

More Info.

PD&G Wallcover Inc.

Call Us: 949-487-9261
Email: deb@pdgwallcover.com