North Laurel has some amazing history. We will focus this time on its most famous, or infamous, road—Whiskey Bottom.
Whiskey Bottom Road has existed for over 125 years and for much of its existence it was known as Old Annapolis Road. The road currently extends just over two miles from the border of Anne Arundel County at Laurel Racetrack to just past its crossing of Stephens Road. It was shown going from Montgomery Road in Highland (current Route 108) close to Annapolis in 1794’s Maryland map. This is why it is referred to in the 1878 Hopkins Atlas as “Old Annapolis Road,” and the part that became Route 216 was called Laurel Road because instead of continuing east to Anne Arundel County, it turned south to Laurel and Prince Georges County.
The path and name of the road wasn’t always clear, sometimes being called All Saints or Sandy Bottom Road. A 1988 property plat confused it with Stephens Road, but this was an obvious error since Stephens, as well as Whiskey Bottom, accurately appeared on the 1961 Prescriptive Roads map for Howard County. This wasn’t the only time it was confused with Stephens Road. The first mention found of the name Whiskey Bottom Road was in 1891, but was actually Stephens Road, when it was reported that Henry A. Penny, Jr. was “awarded a contract for the masonry of a bridge over Hammond’s branch, on the Whiskey Bottom Road” (Baltimore Sun). Stephens Road connects Whiskey Bottom and Gorman Roads while crossing Hammond Branch.
Renaming the Road
In 1950, some local residents expressed their dislike for the name of the road and petitioned the county commissioners to change it to “Patuxent Drive.” “Legend holds that the newly paved road got its name from a murdered bootlegger who was abandoned along its stretches” or that it was a meeting place for bootleggers that during Prohibition operated stills in the woods between the road and Hammond Branch. The Baltimore Sun reported that Whiskey Bottom Road’s “shady past climaxed several years ago when the bullet-ridden body of one-time gangster Hunter Lewis was found at the end of the road.”
The hyperbole about this terrible area, along with a petition by local resident and attorney William O. Skeels, who insisted on renaming the road Patuxent Drive, convinced Howard County Board of County Commissioners member Charles E. Miller that the majority wanted the name change. Therefore, the last meeting of the Commissioners on November 21, 1950, after losing their re-election earlier in the month, decided that Whiskey Bottom Road must be replaced by the name Patuxent Drive.
But some residents, like Thomas A. Sulkie, didn’t want the name changed and charged that the County Commissioners who were just voted out of office should not have made such a change during their lame duck session. The word “Whiskey” is of an honorable Galic origin meaning “water of life,” but the name “Patuxent” was “derived from the language of savage Indians,” said Sulkie. He also lamented he didn’t understand why the name of nearby Scaggsville (listed as “Scraggsville” in the Sun) “didn’t get a higher priority for a name change.”
Poetic Responses
The Laurel News Leader on November 23, 1950 had a front-page article titled “So-Called Whiskey Bottom Road Officially Named ‘Patuxent Drive’.” In response to this notice, the next week’s edition of the News Leader had a lengthy and somewhat poetic front-page article written by “anonymous” titled “The Passing of Whiskey Bottom Road,” and on its third page was a poem, “Epitaph for a Name.” Mr. Sulkie, a poet and former book and poetry editor of the New York Times, was likely the author of both. Here is an excerpt from “Epitaph for a Name.”
Tread softly, stranger, for here is laid
To rest a name which men held dear,
Poor Whiskey Bottom is no more!
So, for her passing, shed a tear.
For Whiskey Bottom was a name
That brave men loved to hear,
Only the politician paled
And quaked with a fearful fear.
Tried in the Court of Public Opinion
Sulkie and like-minded residents persisted, even as some of their neighbors noted their embarrassment when others found out they lived on Whiskey Bottom Road. Mrs. Edward Kennedy was amused at the attempt to change the road name that was about “a hundred years old.” She said, according to an elderly resident, it was named for “the famous Maryland rye whisky” distilled near the original Laurel railroad tracks (The Sun). Mrs. Kennedy was right about two things: the name of the road had been in use since at least 1891 and Maryland rye whiskey was a very famous brand before prohibition.
In reply to Mr. Skeels’ editorializing in the News Leader, Mr. Sulkie directly addressed his neighbor in an Open Letter on December 14, 1950 in the same paper. His poetic form still present, he wrote:
Bill,
The good News Leader reached my table,
Just after breakfast, so when I was able
To down the last pint of my morning brandy
(I always keep a demijohn right handy)
I read your charming letter with attention
And found you quite a genius at invention,
As well as history, morals, and circumvention
Of facts, But then your deep solicitude
About our children touched me, so a mood
Of soothing kindness settled on my brow
Which I shall attempt to capture now.
His clever poem continued down the full column of the page and more and leaves me not quite sure if Mr. Skeels would be amused or just irritated and sore.
On January 23, 1951, the new Board of County Commissioners recently voted into office ruled that the road had no official name and put the question of its name back to the residents. Mr. Edward Kennedy, representing those residents wishing to keep the original name, stated that the petition by those wanting Patuxent Drive had only four names on it. Mr. Skeels insisted that his group had the most signatures and, therefore, it should be Patuxent Drive. Former Commissioner Charles Miller implied that the previous Commission believed the majority wanted the name change, but some of those people changed their minds.
Trying to sway public opinion, on February 1, 1951, Mr. Skeels wrote an article in both the Ellicott City Times and the News Leader claiming victory and that the name was changed to Patuxent Drive. Apparently, he was correct, but it would take another three years to make it momentarily official as the Board of County Commissioners decided that Whiskey Bottom Road would be no more, and it would be called Patuxent Drive between Route 1 and Scaggsville in April 1954. The old Whiskey Bottom signs would come down and Patuxent Drive would be the name on their replacements.
Mr. Skeels, a World War I veteran born in Iowa and a prominent attorney, had purchased land in 1948 along Whiskey Bottom Road, so he should have known its name. But his deed showed the land was along Old Annapolis Road. If he didn’t know the common name of the road, he must have been annoyed to learn of it.
But the saga continued! Mr. Sulkie was persistent and posted street signs for Whiskey Bottom Road. When Mr. Skeels filed a lawsuit claiming the signs were a violation of zoning laws, Mr. Sulkie claimed they were “historical monuments” to the road. The Board of County Commissioners soon decided that “They do not consider the action of their predecessors valid” because a 30-day notice to change the name was not provided as required. The Maryland State Roads Commission then decided that their earlier decision was therefore also not valid (since they really did not have jurisdiction on the matter) and they promptly removed the Patuxent Drive signs the next day. Whiskey Bottom Road survived and is alive and well today thanks to persistent neighbors and a poet.
Whiskey Bottom School Renamed
Detailed records have not yet been found but over 45 years later, some residents were successful in renaming the Whiskey Bottom Elementary School to Laurel Woods. Enlisting children to fight your battles seems to be the solution in this case as who would want a child to go to a school named for a hard liquor, or the word “bottom”? The fifth graders pushing this change preferred the names “Laurel Park” or “Snowden Manor” after a racetrack or a plantation house—interesting choices.
Although approved by the school board in 1972 a “school naming committee” decided in June 1990 that since children at the school requested the name be changed then they would oblige. It was later announced that there would be public hearings on the name change but nothing more about Whiskey Bottom Road Elementary School was mentioned in the school board meeting minutes after the name change in June of 1990. This was one decision that would be final.
Origin of the Name
So, what is the true origin of the name? We know it had nothing to with prohibition since the name pre-dates that era. Perhaps it is true that smaller stills were operating in the woods between the road and Hammond Branch —this would be a plausible explanation. Laurel historian John Calder heard of one more story of the origin of Whiskey Bottom Road’s name. He wrote that “the generally accepted by somewhat imaginative explanation of the term is that in a bygone era there was a commercial distillery...whose product, packaged in bulbous wooden barrels, was rolled rather than carted to an indefinitely located railroad loading platform,” similar to the tobacco hogsheads and their rolling roads.
To refute this story, Calder noted that “there is no recollection or record of any commercial distillery that ever operated in the Laurel area on Whiskey Bottom Road or elsewhere. ... Illegal stills were in business in the river bottomlands on Laurel’s northern perimeter during the periods of Local Option decades before the Volstead Act to enforce prohibition was passed over President Wilson’s veto in 1919.”
We may never know the true origin of the naming of this historic road, or when it began, but Calder gives us as plausible an explanation as currently exists.
Read Hidden History of Howard County by Nathan Davis and Wayne Davis, published by The History Press, for more forgotten and hidden stories about Howard County.