Belward Farm, located at the intersection of Darnestown and Muddy Branch Roads, is one of the last remaining pieces of undeveloped farmland left in the Gaithersburg/Rockville area. Developers have been drooling over these 138 rolling acres for years, but owner Elizabeth Beall Banks spent most of her life fighting to protect the land. According to an article in the Washington Post, "Banks once scared county planning officials off her land with a shotgun. Another time she stood in front of bulldozers, hugging trees to stop development around her. She turned down numerous lucrative offers to turn the grassy fields into a housing development." Banks, who died on January 17, 2005, eventually sold her land for $5 million (when at the time it was worth $40 million+) to Johns Hopkins University. The old house located on this property was built by Ignatius Ward in 1891 to replace an earlier structure that burned down. This house is a great example of a 19th-century farmhouse with Victorian features. Archived Comments
From 1873 to 1909, Ignatius Beall Ward ran a commercial business at the edge of his farm along Darnestown Road, near Muddy Branch Road. The store sold groceries and supplies and offered wheelwrighting and blacksmithing. The store also served as Hunting Hill's Post Office. His son Porter Garrett Ward ran the store from 1909 to 1929, when it was converted to a house and occupied by the Banks family until it was bulldozed in 1995. Archived Comments
Summit Avenue looking west, towards Gaithersburg High School, circa 1900 and today. Archived Comments
Henry Brookes owned more than 1,000 acres in and around Gaithersburg. His home "Montpelier" was located near the intersection of Frederick and Montgomery Village Avenues and was built sometime in the late 1700s. This house was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the parking lot of the IBM site. Archived Comments
Another house that was lost to a parking lot was the Mills House, located on Muddy Branch Road, just past the bridge over I-270. The Mills family farmed this land and lived in this American foursquare style house for over 100 years. This site is now the Montgomery Club Apartments.
