Huntington Depot Traditional Geocache

The City of Bowie today encompasses a very large tract of land in northeastern Prince George’s County that was once comprised of a vast number of colonial and early national period plantations and farms and early churches.

Railroads always played a principal role in the Town of Bowie. In 1902, the Pennsylvania Railroad bought out the Baltimore and Potomac, and the name of the line changed at that time. A fire in 1910 destroyed the station buildings, but they were rebuilt in the years following that. The Pennsylvania Railroad electrified the line between Baltimore and Washington in 1935 as train travel modernized as well as sought ways to battle the ever encroaching influence of the automobile. In the early 1970s the Pennsylvania Railroad was acquired by the National Rail Passenger Service (Amtrak), which no longer made stops at the little Bowie Station. In 1989, the Maryland Rail Commuter Service (MARC) moved its local service up the line to a new station at Bowie State University, and the little station fell into disuse. The City of Bowie purchased the structures in 1991, moved the three buildings to their current site, and restored them. The Huntington Railroad Museum opened in 1994. It was joined, in 2006, by the restoration of the 1926 Bowie Building Association structure next door as the “Old Town Bowie Welcome Center and Children’s Museum.”