The Joppa Road

The road beneath your wheels follows a path that began as a Native American trail. In the late sixteen hundreds, rangers are said to have ridden this route to keep the frontier peace. That trail became a colonial highway leading to Joppa Town, which served as the county seat of Baltimore County from seventeen twelve to seventeen sixty-eight.

In those decades, Joppa Town was the rival of Baltimore, a trading port on the Gunpowder River with its own courthouse, taverns, and ambitions. Baltimore eventually eclipsed it, silting of the river and disease drove people away, and by eighteen fifteen little remained but a church and ruins. The road survived long after the town that named it. You are traveling one of Maryland's oldest continuous routes.