MARYLAND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY                          557

WASHINGTON COUNTY.

Washington County was erected out of the western portion of Fred-
erick County by the Constitutional Convention of 1776, which decided
that Frederick County was then so large that it should be divided into
three parts by the erection of two new counties, Montgomery and Wash-
ington. The limits laid down at the time for Washington County were
as follows:

" Beginning at a place where the temporary line crosses the south mountain
and running thence by a line on the ridge of said mountain to the river
Potomac, and thence with the lines of the said county so as to include all
the lands to the westward of the line running on the ridge of the south
mountain as aforesaid to the beginning, shall be and is hereby erected into
a new county by the name of Washington county."

The settlements of Washington County were made much later than
were those in the counties in the tide-water portions of the State, the
delay being due to three factors. The presence of the Blue Eidge at
its eastern limits with only the gap at the Potomac River served for a
long time as the limit of enterprise and exploration. The territory,
therefore, with its fertile limestone valleys and picturesque situation was
practically unknown and offered in its wildness and isolation little
inducement to the early settlers who found abundance of land on the
eastern side of the Blue Eidge. Still another factor appears to have been
the fear of stirring up the Indians, whose treaties with the whites for-
bade the settlement of Europeans to the west of the Blue Eidge
mountains.

The dying down of South Mountain in Pennsylvania left an easy
passage along the fertile plains of the limestone valley for progressive
settlement and the running of the " temporary line " between Maryland
and Pennsylvania stimulated settlement on the western side of the
Blue Eidge so that before the outbreak of the Eevolutionary War there
were thriving centers of colonization about Hagerstown, Sharpsburg, and
Williamsport. At the time of the termination of the treaty with the
Indians Fort Frederick was established on the western side of the
valley and the security which it brought, together with the highway from