Frederick, Maryland | |
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City | |
City of Frederick | |
Downtown Frederick in September 2015
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Motto: "The City of Clustered Spires" | |
Location in Frederick County and the state of Maryland |
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Location within the state of Maryland | |
Coordinates: 39°24′50″N 77°24′40″W / 39.41389°N 77.41111°WCoordinates: 39°24′50″N 77°24′40″W / 39.41389°N 77.41111°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Maryland |
County | Frederick |
Founded | 1745 |
Government | |
• Mayor | Randy McClement (R-MD) |
• Board of Aldermen | Kelly Russell (D-MD) Michael O'Connor (D-MD) Josh Bokee (D-MD) Donna Kuzemchak (D-MD) Phil Dacey (R-MD) |
Area | |
• City | 59.89 km2 (23.13 sq mi) |
• Land | 59.41 km2 (22.94 sq mi) |
• Water | 0.48 km2 (0.19 sq mi) |
Elevation | 92 m (302 ft) |
Population (2010) | |
• City | 65,239 |
• Estimate (2015) | 69,479 |
• Density | 1,145.5/km2 (2,966.8/sq mi) |
• Urban | 141,576 (US: 230th) |
• Metro (US: 7th) | 6,097,684 |
Time zone | EST (UTC-5) |
• Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
Area code(s) | 301, 240 |
FIPS code | 24-30325 |
GNIS feature ID | 0584497 |
Highways | I-70, I-270, US 15, US 40, US 340, MD 80, MD 144, MD 355 |
Website | www |
Frederick is a city and the county seat of Frederick County in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is part of the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area. Frederick has been an important crossroads community since it was located in colonial times at the intersection of an important north–south Indian trail, and east–west routes to the Chesapeake Bay both at Baltimore and what became Washington, D.C. and across the Appalachian mountains to the Ohio River watershed. It is a part of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of a greater Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area. The city's population was 65,239 people at the 2010 United States Census, making it the second-largest incorporated city in Maryland, behind Baltimore.
Frederick is home to Frederick Municipal Airport (IATA: FDK), which primarily accommodates general aviation traffic, and to the county's largest employer U.S. Army's Fort Detrick bioscience/communications research installation.
Located where (the easternmost ridge of the Blue Ridge mountains) meets the rolling hills of the Piedmont region, the Frederick area became a crossroads even before European explorers and traders arrived. Native American hunters (known to Virginia colonists as "Susquehannocks", which might be Algonquian-speaking Shawnee or more likely Seneca or Tuscarora or other members of the Iroquois Confederation) followed the Monocacy River from the Susquehanna River watershed in Pennsylvania to the Potomac River watershed and the lands of the more agrarian and maritime Algonquian peoples, particularly the Lenape of the Delaware valley or the Piscataway or Powhatan of the lower Potomac watershed and Chesapeake Bay. This became known as the Monocacy Trail or even the Great Indian Warpath, with some travelers continuing southward through the "Great Appalachian Valley" (Shenandoah Valley, etc.) to the western Piedmont in North Carolina, or traveling down other watersheds in Virginia toward the Chesapeake Bay, such as those of the Rappahannock, James and York Rivers.