New Market: One Day's Ride from Frederick

On June first, seventeen ninety-three, speculators William Plummer and Nicholas Hall sold the first nineteen lots in a new town they had platted along the Baltimore Turnpike in Frederick County. The location was deliberate: New Market sits on the road between Frederick and Baltimore, making it a natural stop for travelers moving goods between the coast and the interior. When the Baltimore Turnpike became part of the National Road, one of the earliest and most-traveled highways in the country, New Market's inns and taverns thrived.

Businesses rose to serve wagon trains, then declined when faster routes bypassed the old road. Antique shops began opening in the twentieth century, as owners of old buildings along the narrow main street found a new market for old things. Today New Market is known as the Antiques Capital of Maryland, its two-century-old storefronts filled with furniture, quilts, and porcelain.