The High Times of Clear Spring
The small town of Clear Spring, west of Hagerstown, has a long and interesting history.
We know history runs deep in Washington County, but it runs much deeper than what happened on the Antietam battlefield on Sept. 17, 1862. Decades before the Civil War, Clear Spring, now a small town of fewer than 400 people, was a thriving community, serving as a stop-over point for pioneers heading west on the new National Pike.
Sometime around 1818 the road was extended beyond Conocoheague Creek, six miles east of Clear Spring. There, a farmer named Martin Myers was quietly tending his crops and livestock.
When the new road bisected his land, he saw an opportunity and around 1821 began subdividing his farmland into lots on each side of the new road. One of the lots contained the clear spring for which the incorporated town would be named. The spring still flows near the road today.
The Wilson School is a historic one-room schoolhouse listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Clear Spring.
The fresh water became an appealing place for coaches and wagons carrying west-bound pioneers to stop and refresh. Myers built a small log cabin from which he sold crocks and jugs so pioneers could fill them with water for their onward journey. Within a few years the spring became a nice place to stop for an extended rest, and a small log hotel was built. It became known as the “hotel at the clear spring.”
And then, Clear Spring hit its heyday. From the 1820s to the 1860s Clear Spring was a boom town. The town was incorporated in 1821, and by 1825 there were seven hotels along the National Pike and accompanying restaurants, stores, and shops. Blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddlers, and other tradesmen who could make repairs to wagons or provide the goods and services needed for the long journey west all had booming businesses.
Dozens of houses were built along the road, so close that their narrow front porches were front-row seats to the country’s westward expansion.
But the good times lasted only a few decades. When the C&O Canal opened in 1850 and west-bound railroads were built, the National Pike slowed dramatically—at least for a while. The hotels and businesses closed and many of the buildings were converted into homes, and Clear Spring became a peaceful small town for the rest of the 19th century, except for the turbulent period during the Civil War.
The town experienced a bit of a resurgence with the onset of the automobile as the National Pike returned as the main highway to the west from Baltimore and Washington. But by the 1960s Interstate 70 was built to mimic the National Pike without stop signs and small towns to travel through. What business the automobile brought now flew by on the interstate, just out of sight of Clear Spring.
The Rufus Wilson building is a complex of mid-late 19th century buildings at the center of a small rural settlement near Clear Spring and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
For the last half century, Clear Spring has been a pleasant community of a few hundred people, a few interesting places and an eclectic history. A Holiday Inn Express just off the interstate stands as its only hotel, but it’s largely filled with interstate travelers in search of a single night’s sleep. There is a McDonald’s and Al’s Restaurant and Pizzeria near the interstate for hungry travelers but the restaurants and bars in town dried up long ago.
Signs still mark historic places, like the location of the spring between the addresses of 109 and 111 Cumberland Street, as the National Pike is now known on its brief journey through Clear Spring. Historic signs make note of the town’s Civil War history. Four local buildings, including the Rufus Wilson Complex, the Joseph Fiery House, the Wilson School, and Plumb Grove are all close to the pike and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Each May the National Pike Festival recreates the wagon ride along the now-paved National Pike. They all call attention to the town’s past, but residents just like moving along in the anonymity of today.