Rock Somerset history Traditional Cache

Find the spot where the founders of Somerset constructed their first houses.  From the history sign, look left and you will be right.  

Set down at the turn of the century around an unpaved crossroad in the midst of Maryland tobacco fields, the cluster of new residences there bore little resemblance to the Town of Somerset of today. That crossroad now is known as the intersection of Dorset Avenue and Surrey Street. In 1906, it was merely the center of a fifty-acre parcel of farmland which five government scientists had purchased in 1890. Their plans for the land were described in a story which appeared in the Washington Evening Star of May 17, 1890: ... the scientific men of the Department of Agriculture ... selected a tract consisting of 50 acres of rolling land adjoining the property of General Drum just across the District line in Montgomery County. The company will begin operations by providing the property with a good system of sewerage, a bountiful supply of waste and electric lights for the Georgetown and Tenalytown Electric Railway Company. The lots are to contain no less than one acre, with a view to insuring the building of...a suburb fashioned after the very pleasant ones of Boston and other northern cities. -- from Town of Somerset History - Beginnings by Helen H. Jaszi