Upper Marlboro works to keep that small-town feel

The town of Upper Marlboro is a small enclave with a small-town feel. Less than 1 mile across and half a mile wide, the town has three churches and a Main Street with a smattering of restaurants and shops.

The sidewalks are brick, as is the courthouse and public library — which dominate the landscape. The people, however, are softies.

“It’s a great place to do business,” said Donnell Long, owner of Old Towne Inn on Main Street. “The community is grateful and supports you.”

That’s precisely what Stephen Sonnett discovered when he moved here in 2004. He was so smitten he ran for the Board of Commissioners.

“There is a sense of community,” said Sonnett, who won the nonpartisan election and currently serves as board president. “It’s a town, and many people have told me that they came to Upper Marlboro because they wanted to live in a town. We supplement the police, we collect the trash, maintain the streets.”

The town was settled around 1695 and named for the Duke of Marlborough, an ancestor of Winston Churchill. Upper Marlboro was established as a port town for tobacco shipments, according to the official town Web site. In 1706, the western branch of the Patuxent River still was navigable for tobacco vessels. John Carroll, the first archbishop of the United States and founder of Georgetown University, was born there, and a sign on Main Street makes sure everyone knows it.

The town has been the seat of Prince George’s County since 1721, a fact that Sonnett said has its pluses and minuses.

“It’s a mixed blessing to have the county offices and courthouse here,” he said. “We’re looking to get downtown a little more villagelike.”

Because of the courthouse, bail bondsmen have set up shop along Main Street, and in the evenings, most of the county and state workers clear out of town. Many of them don’t know what they’re missing.

Some of the town’s houses date back to the 1700s, and there’s a nice mixture of older single-family homes and newer townhouses.

“It’s got more open spaces than other places,” said Don Frederick, a real estate agent with Re/Max. “There are good transportation routes on 301 and Route 4. For a long time, up until the ’70s, the area was kind of dead. But since then it’s gotten to be real modern and updated.”

That’s one of the reasons Long chose not only to open his restaurant and bar on Main Street, but to live in Upper Marlboro as well.

“It’s convenient to the Beltway and all the surrounding areas,” he said. “You can go to Largo, to Bowie, to Annapolis quickly. You’re stuck in the middle of everything.”

Unlike surrounding unincorporated Upper Marlboro, the housing market in the town itself has largely weathered the storm, Sonnett said.

“It’s doing fine,” Frederick said. “The number of sales were off and prices were down, but the number of sales have risen. Prices aren’t quite back to what they were, but they’re close.”

The highlight of the town’s calendar comes the Saturday before Mother’s Day, when the Upper Marlboro Recreation Council hosts Marlboro Days, a townwide celebration complete with food and fun.

Although its population hovers around only 700, Upper Marlboro is not a place where everyone’s business is everyone’s business. People are friendly, but not invasive. It’s a formula that seems to work.

“Based on the number of complaints I get,” Sonnett said, “everybody seems to get along here.”