Barnesville, MD

Barnesville is a tiny Montgomery County town on a ridge with Sugarloaf Mountain to the north and the Catoctin and Blue Ridge ranges to the west. The land was surveyed in 1749, and the settlement grew around the Barnes family’s holdings, a log store, a tavern, and an early school. It was chartered in 1811 and incorporated in 1888. The nearby Chesapeake and Ohio Canal brought more traffic, while the town’s position near White’s Ferry made the area strategically important during the Civil War.

Barnesville still feels tied to the wider landscape. The Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve keeps the surrounding farm country from turning into subdivisions, and MARC trains give commuters a direct line toward Washington. Town Hall, the post office, two churches, local artists, and Sustainable Barnesville projects fill in the small-town details. One remarkable footnote belongs to Virginia Hall, the Baltimore-born World War II resistance operative who lived here until her death in 1982. Barnesville’s local scoop is the mix of protected farmland, commuter rail, and a spy story hiding in a town measured in blocks.