Boonsboro, Maryland

• 1. Introduction

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  Boonsboro, Maryland sits at the foot of South Mountain in Washington County, near a battlefield where thousands of men bled and died in September 1862. It is a small town of roughly 3,800 people, covering less than three square miles. Yet within that compact geography lies a story that stretches from the Seven Years' War through the Civil War and into the twenty-first century, when a best-selling romance novelist transformed a gutted inn into a national tourist destination. How does a town this size carry this much history? And what is the relationship between a place defined by war and one now defined by love stories? Those questions pull us through Boonsboro from its founding myth to the present mayor, Howard W. Long.

• 2. A Name With Two Stories

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  Local lore says Boonsboro was founded by George Boone, described as a cousin of the frontiersman Daniel Boone. According to that tradition, George first named the settlement "Margaretsville" after his wife, Margaret. When the town was formally incorporated in 1831, the official name on the charter was "Boonesborough." Locals never fully accepted it. Newspapers and residents consistently preferred the shorter, blunter "Boonsboro," and documents were still showing the longer form as late as 1903, more than seventy years after incorporation. The informal name eventually won. That tension between official record and lived preference turns out to be a minor but telling pattern in Boonsboro's character: the town has often moved at its own pace, on its own terms.

• 3. Road Through the Gap

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  In 1758, a road improvement project cut a route through this region to speed travel between Fredericktown and Fort Frederick during the Seven Years' War. That route passed through Turner's Gap and Boonsboro before turning west along what is now Maryland Route 68 toward Williamsport. The segment running from Boonsboro toward Funkstown was later absorbed into the National Turnpike. Today the same corridor through town is called Main Street, and it carries U.S. Route 40 Alternate. The road links Boonsboro westward to Hagerstown and eastward to Frederick, keeping the town on an axis it has occupied for more than two and a half centuries. Five main highways now serve the town, connecting it to Interstate 70 via Maryland Route 66 and to Interstate 81 via Maryland Route 68, making Boonsboro as much a crossroads in the twenty-first century as it was in the eighteenth.

• 4. War at the Doorstep

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  Two separate Civil War battles were fought within Boonsboro's present borders. Southeast of town lies the site of the Battle of South Mountain, and the Antietam National Battlefield sits close enough that the town's proximity to it is noted in its geographic description. After the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Boonsboro itself was pressed into service as a holding place for wounded soldiers. Joseph O'helper was serving as mayor during that period, having taken office in 1859, and he held the position through 1862 while the town absorbed the human wreckage of the campaign. The Washington Monument that stands in the area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as are the Boonsboro Historic District, Bowman House, Ingram-Schipper Farm, Keedy House, and St. Mark's Episcopal Church.

• 5. Nora Roberts and the Inn

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  A fire in 2007 struck a building that had housed a business called Asaro's; its successor, Vesta, moved across the street. A more damaging fire came in 2008, completely gutting a former inn that had been on the verge of renovation and reopening. The author Nora Roberts, who has written over 170 romantic novels, stepped in. She owns the Inn BoonsBoro, which finally opened a year after the 2008 fire. Roberts has since extended her presence in town to a gift shop and a bookstore, drawing fans and visitors from across the country and earning Boonsboro a reputation as a literary and tourist destination. The effect on the town's profile has been substantial enough that Roberts is listed among Boonsboro's notable people alongside William Thomas Hamilton, the 38th Governor of Maryland, who was born in Boonsboro on the 8th of September 1820.

• 6. Demographics and Growth

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  At the 2000 census, Boonsboro had 2,803 residents. By 2010 that figure had climbed to 3,336, and the 2020 census recorded 3,799 people. The 2020 count found a median age of 39.2 years, with 24.8 percent of residents under 18 and 16.8 percent aged 65 or older. There were 1,386 households, of which 37.7 percent included children under 18. The entire population is classified as living in rural areas. Racial composition in 2020 was 87.2 percent white, 6.8 percent two or more races, and 4.7 percent Hispanic or Latino. The homeowner vacancy rate in 2020 stood at 1.4 percent, suggesting a tightly occupied housing stock in a town that has grown by roughly a thousand residents over two decades.

• 7. Governing a Small Town

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  From 1831 through 1939, Boonsboro's chief executive was elected every year; the title was originally "Burgess" before shifting to Mayor. Between 1940 and 1975 the term extended to two years, and since 1976 mayors have served four-year terms. One mayor, Charles F. (Skip) Kauffman, Jr., held office from 1988 through 2016, a run of twenty-eight years that dwarfs the single-year tenures of the town's earliest leaders like Jonathan Shafer, who served from 1831 to 1835. The town is governed by a seven-member Town Council alongside the mayor. Among the notable people connected to the town is Edwin R. Keedy, born in 1880 and died in 1958, who served as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Charlotte Winters, who served in the navy and lived to 109, was once identified as the oldest surviving female American World War I veteran. Boonsboro also hosts the JFK 50 Mile race every November, starting from within town limits.