Montgomery County ponders fate of roadside landmark
By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
July 8, 2009
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| A debate rages over moving the historic Cider Barrel stand in Gaithersburg. The stand, once surrounded by farm land, is now bordered by residential communities. (Andrew Harnik/Examiner) |
Montgomery County officials are trying to figure out what to do with the Cider Barrel, a rare beacon of the county's rural past that now sits incongruously in a sea of suburbia.
The roadside attraction, shaped like a one-story barrel, opened in Germantown in the mid-1920s advertising fresh, nonalcoholic apple cider during the height of Prohibition.
The stand closed in 2003, after its longtime owner, Bill Cross, sold the property to a developer.
Locals fondly remember a packed store during their annual autumnal visits to the stand, which sits on the busy Maryland Route 355.
"I wish I had a chance to go get their cider again É to me it was just unmatchable," said Neil Greenberger, a County Council spokesman who has lived near the stand for 19 years. "You knew their stuff came from a tree right down the road."
County planners have recommended moving the stand, which the county named a historical site in 1980 and can't be demolished, to a more accessible place in the Germantown area.
The land behind the stand has been developed with luxury apartments, and there is no public parking for the stand, which sits padlocked and shuttered. Its insides, visible through a crack in the wall, are covered in trash.
"Right now, it's visible but it's completely unusable," said County Council member Michael Knapp, D-Germantown.
Knapp said it made sense to move the stand to a place in Germantown where it could be reopened and used again, like as part of a farmers market.
"It's more important to have people live the history than just see the history," Knapp said.
But proposals to move the stand have drawn the ire of the area's preservationists, who argue that the stand's location is a key reason to preserve it.
"The whole thing about the Cider Barrel is its location," said Kathie Hulley, a board member of the Germantown Historical Society. "It was in a very prominent position on the 'great road,' " she added, referencing one of Route 355's many nicknames.
She said the county needed to recognize and preserve both its agricultural history and the history of Route 355, which played an important role in contributing to the opening of the western territories and was used by government officials to escape the British in the War of 1812.
"If you do away with your history, everything's transient. You have to have something you can fasten on to," she said.
