Montgomery County.gov (Public Domain)
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Maryland Route 355 in Montgomery County is worth driving down and exploring. The state highway runs from the edge of Washington, DC, up to the city of Frederick, tracking Interstate 270 and serving as the commercial strip and main highway for the suburbs along the I-270 corridor. Any local or commuter can rattle them off: Bethesda, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Clarksburg, Urbana. I’d like to eventually drive that entire stretch, and document what it’s like to pass through each ring of suburbia as you leave the city. But for now, I’ve focused on a fascinating four-mile stretch in Rockville—local names Hungerford Drive and Rockville Pike—which is a microcosm of the history, and the change taking place, in the DC-area suburbs.
It’s always interesting to find old write-ups of commercial strips like this, especially from the 1970s, when they had become old enough to be studied with some sense of time and perspective, but young enough that they were still mostly intact in their original form. For example, check out this piece in the Washington Post from 1979, simply titled “The Rockville Pike.” It identifies Rockville Pike as “the Main Street of the suburbs,” and notes that in 1964, a Montgomery County council member dubbed it “the ugliest place in Maryland.” (He must not have been familiar with Maryland’s portion of U.S. 1.)
The Post article also profiles a produce vendor, who opened up back in 1946 when there were dozens of such vendors. By 1979, he was the last one. It’s remarkable how recently you could still find such semi-regulated, small-scale commerce along a major thoroughfare. On many country roads, you still can. It’s heartening, in a way. The stroad form these thoroughfares take today is really quite recent in the big picture. (Read more.)
