Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda. The National Institutes of Health's main campus and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center are in Bethesda, in addition to a number of corporate and government headquarters.
As an unincorporated community, Bethesda has no official boundaries. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the community had a total population of 68,056.
History
Bethesda is located in a region that was populated by the Piscataway and Nacotchtank tribes at the time of European colonization. Fur trader Henry Fleet became the first European to visit the area, reaching it by sailing up the Potomac River. He stayed with the Piscataway tribe from 1623 to 1627, either as a guest or prisoner (historical accounts differ). Fleet eventually secured funding for another expedition to the region and was later granted proprietary rights to 2,000 acres of land in the nascent colony and became a member of Maryland’s colonial legislature. Raids from the Senecas and Susquehannock resulted in the creation of the Maryland division of Rangers in 1694 to patrol the frontier.
Most settlers in colonial Maryland were tenant farmers who paid their rent in tobacco, and colonists continued to expand farther north in search of fertile land. Henry Darnall (1645–1711) surveyed a area in 1694 which became the first land grant in Bethesda. Tobacco farming was the primary way of life in Bethesda throughout the 1700s. The city avoided seeing action during the Revolutionary War, although it became a supply region for the fledgling Continental Navy. The establishment of Washington, D.C. in 1790 deprived Montgomery County of its economic center at Georgetown, although the event had little effect on the small farmers throughout Bethesda.
Between 1805 and 1821, Bethesda became a rural way station after the development of the Washington and Rockville Turnpike, which carried tobacco and other products between Georgetown and Rockville, and north to Frederick. A small settlement grew around a store and tollhouse along the turnpike by 1862 known as "Darcy's Store", named after the store's owner William E. Darcy. The settlement was renamed in 1871 by postmaster Robert Franck after the Bethesda Meeting House, a Presbyterian church built in 1820. The church burned in 1849 and was rebuilt the same year about south, and its former location became the Cemetery of the Bethesda Meeting House.
Bethesda did not develop beyond a small crossroads village through the 19th century. It consisted of a blacksmith shop, a church and school, and a few houses and stores. In 1852, the postmaster general established a post office in Bethesda and appointed Rev. A. R. Smith its first postmaster. A streetcar line was established in 1890 and suburbanization increased in the early 1900s, and Bethesda grew in population. Communities situated near railroad lines had grown the fastest during the 19th century. Still, mass production of the automobile ended that dependency and Bethesda planners grew the community with the transportation revolution in mind. This included becoming a key stopping point for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on their Georgetown Branch line completed around 1910 that ran from Silver Spring to Georgetown, passing through Bethesda on the way. The branch had a storage yard there and multiple sidings that served the industries in Bethesda in the early 20th century. B & O successor CSX ceased train service on the line in 1985, so the county transformed it into a trail in the rails-to-trails movement. The tracks were removed in 1994, and the first part of the trail was opened in 1998; it has become the most used rail-trail in the United States, averaging over one million users per year.