The Miller Hotel was one of the most popular destinations along the National Road in Washington County. Traveler T.B. Seabright recalled in 1894 that it had large rooms adapted to dancing purposes, where young men and maidens of the vicinity frequently danced to old-time music in its spacious halls, and old wagoners joined these festivities with gusto. Travelers on the National Road also came to this area to improve their transportation. Nearby, Spickler’s Buggy Factory developed rubber-tired buggies, improved horse-drawn sleighs, and later became the site of the first automobile dealer in Washington County. Lewis Spickler, an inventor and entrepreneur, was remembered by his daughter Elizabeth Herbert as having shown the first rubber-tired buggy in Washington County at the Hagerstown Fair. In 1868, at his father’s blacksmith shop, he invented a new model horse-drawn sleigh. Its U.S. patent filing said the draft was less, the sleigh was less likely to overturn, the horse would not strike its heels against the sleigh, snow from the horse’s feet was thrown under the sleigh instead of into the faces of the occupants, and the sleigh was more easily drawn through snowdrifts.