Frederick County is Maryland's Piedmont, the Anglicized version of the Italian word for foot of the mountains, the hilly region east of the Appalachians that runs from New Jersey to Alabama. I hadn’t given any consideration to spending time here other than an overnight stop en-route to Antietam and Harpers Ferry, but I was intrigued by the highway signs for Monocacy National Battlefield. Monocacy? Now that’s a place I never heard about before.

After some Internet research I determined the battlefield was well worth a stop, as is the town of Frederick too once I started reading a little more on its history . The weather was gray and drizzly all day, but I didn’t feel disappointed about the conditions, since I had no plans to stop here anyway.

Why did I never hear about Monocacy? It’s a Civil War battlefield. Well, maybe one reason is that it wasn’t open to the public until 1991, the end of the year and a half I spent in the Washington DC area, although it was dedicated in the 1930s and land acquisition took place mostly in the 1970s. The story essentially is that the Confederates launched yet another northern campaign up the Shenandoah Valley in summer 1864 with the intent of raiding Washington, DC. Their cause was weak by that time, and the goal more to give Lincoln a political defeat that would favor his Democratic opponent, former commander McClellan, in the 1864 presidential election, to bring about an armistice rather than the campaign still being in hopes of a southern victory. Interestingly, it took place within a few days of one year after the Gettysburg battle a short distance to the north in 1863 . Older military history and strategy is all a little weird to me – armies travelling through enemy territory. I’ve been raised on WWI and WWII era history where there are long fronts between enemy powers that shift with battles.

Anyway, Monocacy was arguably a Confederate victory, but one insufficient for them to achieve their goal of overrunning Washington in time before Union troops returned for its defense. One of the great things about Monocacy compared to other Civil War battle sites, especially Gettysburg, is that every place I went I was the only one there.

I knew little about Frederick despite passing through its outskirts on US-15 several times between my home in Manassas and my parents’ house in New York in 1990-91 when I lived in the western 'burbs of the DC area after college.

The center city of Frederick impressively historic and well kept. Frederick has won numerous acclaims for being one of best preserved American cities . It seems like there was little industry since that 1800s era to decline in modern times and no real blight. Most American towns have neighborhoods near their centers that became ghettos for Black people whose job and earnings opportunities were limited by segregation and discrimination and consequently decayed. There’s little sign of it here, though – everywhere in Frederick seems to be nice despite it being such a gray day. The affluence of DC area probably contributes to this since Frederick is in Car commuting distance of Washington’s Maryland suburbs and even to the city by MARC trains.

Frederick’s downtown is lively and lovely, and the view from the distance on a nice day is supposed to be dominated by the numerous steeples of its churches. The outskirts have the standard suburbs, but there is little that is modern within the city center. I had lunch of Pretzel-dough Rueben Calzone at a casual pizza place on Market Street. The advertises weekend night pizza slices from 10 PM to 3 AM so you know downtown Frederick has to be a party place. Frederick certainly has lots of ritzy restaurants beyond my price range even for lunch, and I’m sure the microbreweries must be busy in the evenings.