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DUNDALK-pATAPSCO nECK
HISTORICAL SOCIETY & MUSEUM, Inc.
Edgemere
Anyone familiar with Edgemere and its neighboring communities can tell you with Battle of North Point, how turned the tide of the War of 1812, inspired the American spirit and became the precursor of the Star Spangled Banner.
But from its very beginning, Edgemere has provided a strong sense of community through a shared history and lifestyle that defines the area even today. Most of the land now considered Edgemere was farmland well into the 1930s, even though the area’s first official residents –
the Todd family - arrived in the late 1650s to cultivate tobacco, corn and cotton.
That rural setting was the backdrop in September, 1814, when General John Ross landed British troops – fresh from the burning of the nation’s capital – on the peninsula in a march to shut down the port of Baltimore. American volunteers engaged the invaders as they advanced
throughout the farmland, killing Ross and demoralizing the British, who eventually withdrew.
The community remained obscure to the rest of the world until the late 19th century, when Bethlehem Steel of Pennsylvania expanded its ironworks in nearby Sparrows Point to manufacture steel, and a new legacy took hold.
Edgemere owed much of its development to the steel mill; not all steelworkers wanted to move their families to Sparrows Point, a company town where workers had no say in the policies that governed their lives. Workers migrated to the opportunity offered by the steel mill but chose to live on their own terms.
Meanwhile, some city folk had started building summer cottages on small waterfront lots and the appeal of the many waterways and wooded areas a growing number of homesteaders. A trolley once ran from what is now North Point State Park north through Edgemere and points beyond.
Today, Edgemere remains appealing with a small-town feeling, modern amenities and a fervent sense of community that rings with the historical pride.