Leitersburg, MD

Leitersburg is a Washington County CDP just south of the Pennsylvania line, built around a village square where two old roads meet. Andrew Leiter laid out the place in 1815 after the Greencastle-Baltimore Road crossed Nicholson's Gap Road near his property. Hotels, stores, and taverns served travelers, while nearby Antietam Creek mills and distilleries used the village as an exchange point. The 1847 Leitersburg Turnpike kept that road-town role going.

The Leitersburg Historic District preserves the square and its surrounding streets, including early brick buildings, a tavern, a general store, a meeting hall, and about thirty surviving log buildings. Bell-Varner House and Huckleberry Hall add two more historic names to the local map. The village missed the railroad and later lost through traffic when Maryland Route 60 bypassed it in the 1950s, which helped leave the old plan recognizable. Leitersburg is a crossroads community whose identity sits in the roads, square, stone walls, farms, and buildings that grew up around them.