Laurel, Maryland, Laurel Factory

Nicholas Snowden built a grist mill here on the Patuxent in eighteen eleven, choosing the fall line for its waterpower. His descendants pushed further. By eighteen thirty-five, the Patuxent Cotton Manufacturing Company was operating with capital of more than a quarter million dollars, building housing for close to three hundred workers. The settlement was called Laurel Factory, for the laurel trees along the river, when Edward Snowden became its first postmaster in eighteen thirty-seven.

At its peak the mill employed more than seven hundred workers. It burned in eighteen fifty-five but was rebuilt and kept running for nearly another century, until obsolescence forced its removal in the nineteen forties. The town that grew around it incorporated in eighteen seventy as the City of Laurel. Laurel Park, one of the mid-Atlantic's major horse racing venues, opened nearby in nineteen eleven.