I grew up in Washington County. More specifically I graduated from Boonsboro High School. More specifically than that, I was raised in Sharpsburg. From there we can…

Ilze Hays of Hagerstown doesn’t just see a plant but all the possibilities that plant may hold. Like dandelions. “The dandelion is one of my favorites,” says Hays, who shares her knowledge of plants on her Facebook page Herbtastic. “You can make syrup with…

On Sundays, Doub’s Woods Park in Hagerstown becomes a magical place with warriors and elves and battles and quests. This is all part of the Freehold of Phoenix Hollow…

In 2008 Gretchen Simard got tired of teaching in Virginia and made an unusual career switch. She got her contractor’s license and began remodeling homes. Her business was going along fine, but she uprooted…

When Joseph Wolfe was a child, a relative won a little green lizard at a fair and didn’t know what to do with it. “They reached out, and 13-year-old me was over the moon about it,” Wolfe says. From that anole, Wolfe’s love of…

“Mental health? There are a lot of signs but no one wants to take them seriously until something drastic happens,” says 18-year-old Aspen Marie Griffith. “Mental health is talked about a lot more, but there still isn’t much help. And going through therapy…

If Hub City Vinyl has a mantra, it should be “business in the front, party in the back.” During the day, there’s a record shop in the front of the store where lovers of vinyl can peruse, but in the evenings, Thursdays through Sundays, it’s Live at Hub City Vinyl, a place where…

Author and humanitarian Sam Childers (aka the Machine Gun Preacher), Thaddeus Bullard (WWE Titus O’Neil), and other celebrities are part of local portrait artist Nicole Troup’s mission to bring awareness to her Portraits for a Cause project. Her most recent painting of…

If ever a Major League baseball player achieved nothing more than footnote status, it was Thomas Charles Lipp. He made his Major League debut for the Philadelphia Phillies on…

Mystery and romance novelist Nora Roberts saved the historic building at the intersection of Alt. Route 40 and St. Paul Street, rebuilding it from the ashes of a fire and turning it into an elegant bed and breakfast called Inn BoonsBoro. Each room is named…

For Jeremiah Weddle, farming is in his blood. Relatives going back at least to his great grandparents have been farming in Washington County. His parents started Creek Bound Farm in 1980 doing most of the labor by hand. They grew the farm into the 4,500 acres that the family manages today.

Many moons ago, a young Barry Harbaugh took a class trip with the other seventh graders at Boonsboro Middle School to see a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” at the newly opened Kennedy Center. Sitting in the audience, he just knew he wanted to be a part of live theater for the rest of his life.

In 2004, Tekesha Martinez left Hagerstown and swore she would never come back. Growing up as a foster child, being bounced from place to place, she found herself alone as a teenaged mom and angry at the community that had raised her. She returned in 2010, now a mother of five, and had every intention of leaving again. But fate had other plans. 

Check in on the Flying Boxcars website and it will give you the exact time down to the second before professional baseball makes its return to Hagerstown. Check in on the Visit Hagerstown website for a live feed of the progress on construction of the new downtown ballpark, officially the Hagerstown Multi-Use Sports and Event Center. As the time ticks away and construction continues…

By 1923 much of the town of Smithsburg had been built, and now, a century later, not much has changed. Pleasantly, Smithsburg retains its 19th-century charm and the town center is largely unencumbered by modern development. The town boundaries have been pushed out to accommodate some housing developments over the years and that has brought the population to…

It’s the thrill of the hunt. Whether stalking game for supper or the day’s best bargain, finding what you seek is always satisfying. While some folks insist only new things will do, others turn a savvy eye to second-hand shops for “new-to-me” treasures.

KIX guitarist Brian Forsythe was sitting in a jail cell thinking about how it could all go so wrong. “I had visions of being on an arena stage, and here I was,” says Forsythe, who had been arrested on drug charges. “I couldn’t believe that my life had changed so much.”

Whether you’re in the market for fine antiques, a cozy stay at a bed and breakfast, an accountant to do your taxes, or just a good beer, we’ve got it in our annual reader’s poll list of the best of Hagerstown and Washington County. Here are the restaurants, businesses, professionals, and entertainment venues that our readers picked as the best.

The new look of professional baseball in Hagerstown extends beyond a new name, new uniforms, and a new stadium. The league the Flying Boxcars will play in when they take the field in the spring of 2024 is different from the Minor League Baseball system that the Hagerstown Suns played in from 1981 to 2020.

“Life in the Ukraine was very disturbing—sirens sound every day and this means that missiles and suicide bombers are flying somewhere over the city,” says 76-year-old Svitlana Rochniak. “You don’t know where they will fly. Rockets flew into our city, suicide bombers came into the park next to our house. The facility in the factory where my brother works was bombed, and the research institute where my mom worked was bombed.”