If you’re from MoCo, you’re likely familiar with East and West Gude Drive (pronounced Goo-Dee), but you may not be as familiar with the family the road is named for.
MoCo History
Montgomery County is full of historical landmarks and buildings, many of which are well known outside of the county. But for every notable landmark, there are many more that are often overlooked by the public.
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The iconic neon sign that has been on the Flower Theater for over 70 years has been removed to get refabricated, as the facade is being repaired to look the way it did when it opened in 1950
Per the City of Rockville: “Explore the architecture of the Montgomery County Detention Center this month as the Glenview Mansion and Peerless Rockville Speaker Series presents “The Montgomery County Detention Center: Modernizing the Carceral State.” Architectural historian Teresa Lachin will present a history of the facility at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9 at Glenview Mansion at Rockville Civic Center Park, 603 Edmonston Drive.
Built in 1961, the detention center is situated historically between the outmoded and segregated Montgomery County Courthouse jail in Rockville and the 2003 sustainably designed Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Clarksburg. It was subsequently enlarged and modernized during three successive decades and now awaits partial demolition for redevelopment by the county. The detention center occupies a key transitional period, documenting modernist transformations in prison design, standards and practices, the realities of public funding and support, and the experiences of prison life, such as chronic overcrowding, mental illness and alcoholism, juvenile detention and inmate violence.
Below you will see a list of 16 Montgomery County Public Schools that were closed by the school system at one point in time, but have since reopened. Schools on this list were either reopened or built new on the site of a former school. In some cases the school was renamed. Full list below, with some additional information about/from the schools:
Arcola Elementary School (1820 Franwall Avenue, Silver Spring): Arcola Elementary School opened its doors again in August 2007. The original Arcola Elementary was opened in the 1950’s and closed in the 1980’s. Even though the “new” Arcola is twice the size of the original building with state-of-the-art technology and a diverse student population of over 600 students, the neighborhood is very happy to have the beloved school open again.
From the Montgomery County Sentinel in 1876: “As the story goes, during the Civil War a soldier was decapitated by a saber in a skirmish around what is now Game Preserve Road. After the fight, his fellow soldiers hastily buried him in an unmarked grave, even though they couldn’t find his head to bury with his body.”
The story has been passed down for many generations and many have told tales about the supposed unmarked grave of the headless man. Some have recalled strange noises and apparitions with glowing eyes. Others have seen the figure of a headless soldier (sometimes on a horse and sometimes without it), while many have driven down the Gaithersburg, Maryland road several times and have stated they’ve never noticed anything out of the ordinary. NBC Washington’s Melissa Mollet highlighted the 150-year-old road in a video last year (available below).
In 1906, a crew of miners at the present-day intersection of Falls Road and MacArthur Boulevard (Potomac) were preparing to set off an explosion in a mine’s tunnel in a search for gold. Gold was previously discovered in a nearby stream in the 1860’s and local businessmen were looking to strike it rich. As the story goes, one of the miners tossed their helmet, which was outfitted with a lit candle, during a break. It landed near dynamite and caused a massive explosion that collapsed a building and killed a hoist operator named Charles Eglin. Then, strange things started to happen…
According to Visit Montgomery, “horses would be afraid to go near the mine. Tools and food would go missing, and someone knocking on the walls would reverberate through the tunnels. One of the most chilling incidents happened to a night watchman who said he came across a demon with fiery eyes and 10-foot-long tail. The mine closed soon after and today most of it is now on restricted and private property.”
Glen Echo Park was first developed in 1891 as a National Chautauqua Assembly, which taught the sciences, arts, languages, and literature. The Chautauqua lasted for just one season, and by the early 1900s, the site had become Glen Echo Amusement Park — the premier amusement park serving the Washington area until 1968, when it closed (learn more about the civil rights story here). Below we will share with you a tragic tale that has become somewhat of a local ghost story. A video of what Glen Echo Park looks like today can be seen below.
Glen Echo Park was home to the “Coaster Dips” roller coaster. The popular attraction opened in May 1921 and remained until the park closed in 1968. Coaster Dips was nearly 70 feet tall, and the Potomac River could be seen in the distance before plummeting to the bottom of the rickety wooden coaster. Tragically, William J. Lawrence, a 21-year-old Washington drug clerk, fell from the coaster in 1929. According to local legend, screams from the coaster echo into the late evening hours on clear nights. Per the Washington Post in 1929: