Gaithersburg, Maryland

Gaithersburg is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland. Its estimated residential population is over 60,000, making it the second largest city in the state. Gaithersburg is located northwest of Rockville, Maryland, which is the Montgomery County seat. The median income for a household in the 10 square miles city is $59,879, and the median family income is approximately $66,669.

Gaithersburg first began in 1765 as a small agricultural settlement known as "Log Town." The town officially became "Gaithersburg" when it was incorporated on April 5, 1878, five years after the B&O Railroad built a station there. The city has changed dramatically over the years, and is presently the headquarters of a number of companies serving the life-sciences industry.

In the 1960s, the business expansion into the technology industries first started when the National Bureau of Standards (now called the National Institutes of Standards and Technology) came to Gaithersburg, attracting scientific firms to the area. Another scientific institution - the Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory - is on the National Historic Landmark register for the city. This observatory along with five others in Japan, Italy, Russia and the United States, once gathered information that is still used by scientists today to help determine polar motion; the size, shape, and physical properties of the earth; and to aid the space program through the precise navigational patterns of orbiting satellites. The Gaithersburg station operated until 1982 when computerization rendered the manual observation obsolete.

One of the interesting sites to visit in Gaitherburg is the neo-traditionalist new town of Kentlands, designed by Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, within the greater Gaitherburg community area.