At busy concrete-covered intersections and along ambling country lanes, the road signs in western Howard County give passers-by more than just directions.
The green markers, bearing the names of mills, chapels and old county families, speak also of the area's history -- much of which is still fresh in Granville Wehland's head.
An employee of the county's highway department for more than 30 years, Mr. Wehland remembers when many of the roads got official names. And he should; he named most of them.
In 1961, he was assigned the task of driving every county road -- many in the western section were still unpaved -- and naming them on a huge county map. What he came up with in many ways reflected the institutions and people that had been the center of life in the area for more than 100 years.
"People had always called the roads by what was built along them, or maybe by who had lived there the longest. In many ways we were just making it official," says Mr. Wehland.
Joetta Cramm, who teaches local history at Howard Community College, agrees with Mr. Wehland. "People called the roads by what was familiar," she says, adding that "often what was common to them all was the church.
"In the early days there were often not enough pastors and not enough people to meet every Sunday and do all the sacraments, so many of the smaller churches were served by circuit-rider preachers who went by horseback from one church to another. Each congregation met maybe once a month."
Ms. Cramm notes that a map dated 1878 shows no more than 14,000 residents in the entire county, with only 2,500 living in the western corner.
Today, the west end, not far from the booming development that has characterized Frederick, Columbia and northern Montgomery County in recent decades, remains relatively unchanged, with only a handful of new roads added to service recent building. The area is crisscrossed by roads named for chapels, a remnant of the religious life that often held the community together in its beginnings. Union Chapel, Jennings Chapel, Howard Chapel and Linden Chapel all lend their names to the landscape.
Union Chapel, which still stands on the corner of Route 97 and Union Chapel Road in Glenwood, was originally part of the traveling-preacher circuit. Now St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, the simple, double-doored meetinghouse was built in 1833 as a nondenominational place of worship. It soon became one of the first Methodist churches in the area.
Although an ancient bell still stands outside to call the faithful, the tiny chapel building speaks of a day when it was hard to fill even the few pews that fit in the main worship room. The current congregation recently completed an addition to the building, but anticipates that it will eventually outgrow the space, says Harry Brunett, the pastor at St. Andrew's.
Jennings Chapel, too, has seen its share of additions. Established in 1854, the white clapboard church sits perched above the road that bears its name in Woodbine. An old graveyard, where many of the church's members have been buried, lies behind the original building. Cows from a neighboring farm graze close by. Although Jennings Chapel is also Methodist, church members say there is no evidence that it was ever part of the traveling-preacher circuit.
Only a few miles from there, Howard Chapel Road leaves Jennings Chapel Road and leads the way to Montgomery County. Curving and overgrown, the route crosses the Patuxent River before passing by what remains of its namesake, a neglected cemetery covered in dense growth.
The Howard Chapel cemetery is all that is left of a chapel and school that were once the center of a free black community scattered throughout the towns of Sunshine and Unity before the Civil War. Named for George Howard, a former slave who gained his freedom in 1857 and lived along the Patuxent River, the chapel was part of the Rockville circuit of Negro churches, says Gwen Marcus, historic preservation coordinator for the Montgomery County Planning Department.
The church and school remained a focal point for the community until World War I, and as late as 1979 there were parts of the chapel still standing, Ms. Marcus says. Today, only the grave markers remain.
Linden Chapel, which used to sit along a small road in Clarksville, has left behind nothing but its name. However, the congregation continued on after a merger and became the Linden Linthicum United Methodist Church on Route 108, Ms. Cramm says.
Over the years, as the people in these rural communities shifted their focus from local businesses and institutions to downtown Baltimore or the suburban shopping mall, the importance of the roads became diminished. Only the names continued to cling to the past.
"The county was changing and these crossroads that used to be so important because there was a blacksmith or a grocery store began to lose their importance as people got cars and began moving," says Ms. Cramm.
Some road names have disappeared for the sake of clarity. Route 97, which runs from Westminster to Washington, used to be known as Westminster Road if you were driving north and Georgetown Road if you were headed south, says Ms. Cramm.
Among the roads named by Mr. Wehland is one that has gained much importance over the years. Owen Brown Road got its name from one of its few original residents. "It was just the road to Owen Brown's place. He lived back there in a little cinder-block house," Mr. Wehland says. Today the road is a major route through Columbia.