When the Washington County Free Library decided it needed a way to get books to residents throughout the county and not just in Hagerstown, it was ahead of its time, and in 1905 it established the first bookmobile in the United States. A horse-drawn cart to…

Giuseppe Bellanca is a demanding coworker. He always wants to be fed, likes to nap at the desk, tends to play more than get his work done, and expects someone else to clean up his messes. But this funny…

It was more than five decades ago when a young guitar player named Lew Palladino was asked to sit in for a night with a band whose regular guitar player couldn’t make it. Then 14, Palladino ended up playing the entire week with that band in The Vogue Room in the Colonial Hotel in Hagerstown. The band…

On July 26, 1864, Gen. Jubal Early ordered Gen. “Tiger” John McCausland to proceed to Chambersburg and deliver a ransom demand. “At Chambersburg levy $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in Northern Money to pay for the houses of Andrew Hunter, Alexander R. Boteler and Edmund I. Lee of Jefferson Co. Va., which were…

I grew up in Washington County. More specifically I graduated from Boonsboro High School. More specifically than that, I was raised in Sharpsburg. From there we can…

Ilze Hays of Hagerstown doesn’t just see a plant but all the possibilities that plant may hold. Like dandelions. “The dandelion is one of my favorites,” says Hays, who shares her knowledge of plants on her Facebook page Herbtastic. “You can make syrup with…

On Sundays, Doub’s Woods Park in Hagerstown becomes a magical place with warriors and elves and battles and quests. This is all part of the Freehold of Phoenix Hollow…

In 2008 Gretchen Simard got tired of teaching in Virginia and made an unusual career switch. She got her contractor’s license and began remodeling homes. Her business was going along fine, but she uprooted…

When Joseph Wolfe was a child, a relative won a little green lizard at a fair and didn’t know what to do with it. “They reached out, and 13-year-old me was over the moon about it,” Wolfe says. From that anole, Wolfe’s love of…

“Mental health? There are a lot of signs but no one wants to take them seriously until something drastic happens,” says 18-year-old Aspen Marie Griffith. “Mental health is talked about a lot more, but there still isn’t much help. And going through therapy…

If Hub City Vinyl has a mantra, it should be “business in the front, party in the back.” During the day, there’s a record shop in the front of the store where lovers of vinyl can peruse, but in the evenings, Thursdays through Sundays, it’s Live at Hub City Vinyl, a place where…

Author and humanitarian Sam Childers (aka the Machine Gun Preacher), Thaddeus Bullard (WWE Titus O’Neil), and other celebrities are part of local portrait artist Nicole Troup’s mission to bring awareness to her Portraits for a Cause project. Her most recent painting of…

If ever a Major League baseball player achieved nothing more than footnote status, it was Thomas Charles Lipp. He made his Major League debut for the Philadelphia Phillies on…

Mystery and romance novelist Nora Roberts saved the historic building at the intersection of Alt. Route 40 and St. Paul Street, rebuilding it from the ashes of a fire and turning it into an elegant bed and breakfast called Inn BoonsBoro. Each room is named…

For Jeremiah Weddle, farming is in his blood. Relatives going back at least to his great grandparents have been farming in Washington County. His parents started Creek Bound Farm in 1980 doing most of the labor by hand. They grew the farm into the 4,500 acres that the family manages today.

Many moons ago, a young Barry Harbaugh took a class trip with the other seventh graders at Boonsboro Middle School to see a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” at the newly opened Kennedy Center. Sitting in the audience, he just knew he wanted to be a part of live theater for the rest of his life.

In 2004, Tekesha Martinez left Hagerstown and swore she would never come back. Growing up as a foster child, being bounced from place to place, she found herself alone as a teenaged mom and angry at the community that had raised her. She returned in 2010, now a mother of five, and had every intention of leaving again. But fate had other plans. 

Check in on the Flying Boxcars website and it will give you the exact time down to the second before professional baseball makes its return to Hagerstown. Check in on the Visit Hagerstown website for a live feed of the progress on construction of the new downtown ballpark, officially the Hagerstown Multi-Use Sports and Event Center. As the time ticks away and construction continues…

By 1923 much of the town of Smithsburg had been built, and now, a century later, not much has changed. Pleasantly, Smithsburg retains its 19th-century charm and the town center is largely unencumbered by modern development. The town boundaries have been pushed out to accommodate some housing developments over the years and that has brought the population to…

It’s the thrill of the hunt. Whether stalking game for supper or the day’s best bargain, finding what you seek is always satisfying. While some folks insist only new things will do, others turn a savvy eye to second-hand shops for “new-to-me” treasures.