page_title: Maryland Route 117
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Maryland Route 117 / History
caption_attribution_description: English: MD 117 (Clarksburg Road) at the CSX bridge (MD 121 terminates at the camera location), Boyds, Maryland, USA Camera location 39°&#160;11′&#160;4.10″&#160;N, 77°&#160;18′&#160;44.70″&#160;W View this and other nearby images on: Google Maps - Google Earth - OpenStreetMap(Info)
context_page_description: Maryland Route 117 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The highway runs 12.40 miles from MD 28 near Dawsonville east to West Diamond Avenue next to MD 355 in Gaithersburg. MD 117 is an L-shaped highway that connects the rural western Montgomery County communities of Dawsonville and Boyds with Germantown, Gaithersburg, and Interstate 270 in the suburban central part of the county. The highway also provides access to Seneca Creek State Park, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and several commuter rail stations along MARC's Brunswick Line, which the highway parallels. MD 117 was the inspiration for the 1971 hit song "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
  MD 117 originally consisted of three disjoint segments. The segment from MD 28 to west of Boyds was built in the early 1910s and extended to Boyds in the late 1920s. The two other segments were built west from Germantown and west from MD 124 in Gaithersburg in the early 1930s. MD 117 east of MD 124 was originally part of the latter highway, which was constructed in the early 1910s.
context_section_description: The first segment of MD 117 constructed was from the modern MD 117–MD 124 intersection east of Gaithersburg. This segment was one of the original state roads planned by the Maryland State Roads Commission in 1909; the highway later became part of MD 124. This highway was constructed as a 14-foot-wide (4.3 m) macadam road west of Gaithersburg in 1911 and 1912 and within the town of Gaithersburg in 1914. Bucklodge Road from MD 28 near Dawsonville north to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (now CSX) was constructed as a 9-foot-wide (2.7 m) macadam road by Montgomery County with state aid by 1915. Bucklodge Road was extended as a concrete road to the underpass of the railroad at Boyds east of the southern end of MD 121 in 1928. A disjoint segment of macadam road was laid from MD 118 at Old Germantown west to Schaeffer Road in 1930 and extended west to near Little Seneca Creek by 1933. A third section of macadam road was also built from the modern MD 117–MD 124 intersection west to the hamlet of Clopper east of Great Seneca Creek by 1933. All three segments were later marked as MD 117.
  MD 117 was widened from 12 to 20 feet (3.7 to 6.1 m) from Old Germantown to Little Seneca Creek in 1948. The gap between Old Germantown and Clopper was filled with a modern highway, including the modern bridge across Great Seneca Creek, and was brought into the state highway system in 1951 and 1952. MD 117 became a single highway when the county highway between Boyds and Old Germantown was brought into the state highway system in 1956. However, in 1959, MD 117's eastern terminus was rolled back to the railroad crossing at Boyds. The highway between Boyds and MD 124 west of Gaithersburg was brought back into the state highway system in 1974. The following year, MD 124 was rerouted north along Quince Orchard Road through a cloverleaf interchange with I-270 to MD 355, then southeast concurrent with MD 355 to rejoin its old alignment in downtown Gaithersburg. West Diamond Avenue from MD 124 to MD 355 was assigned MD 924. By 1987, the MD 924 designation was removed—to be used on its current course in Harford County—and replaced with an extension of MD 117.
  MD 117's partial interchange with I-270 was constructed in 1987; to that point, MD 117's access to I-270 had been indirect via the Interstate's interchange with Quince Orchard Road, which had been built as a county highway concurrent with the freeway in 1956. MD 117 was expanded to a divided highway from west of MD 118 to MD 119 in Germantown and on either side of its intersection with MD 124 in Gaithersburg by 1999. Since at least 1950, West Diamond Avenue had passed under MD 355's bridge across the railroad and met that highway at an oblique intersection. In 1987, MD 355's bridge was replaced with the present bridge and the oblique intersection was replaced with a more gentle curve and right-in/right-out interchange with northbound MD 355. In 1991, access to southbound MD 355 was added via what is now MD 117A. In 2003, the right-in/right-out interchange with northbound MD 355 was removed. Old Towne Road was built as an extension of West Diamond Avenue to Summit Avenue in downtown Gaithersburg. Northbound MD 355 connected with this extension via Fulks Corner Avenue. The piece of MD 117 from the removed ramps to Fulks Corner Road became a short, municipally maintained extension of MD 117. In 2012, MD 117 was truncated at the intersection with MD 117A west of the MD 355 overpass.
caption: MD 117's underpass of CSX's Metropolitan Subdivision rail line viewed from the highway's junction with MD 121 at Boyds
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