Industry
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The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission built the Burnt Mills water filtration facility in 1929 to meet increasing demand for clean water in the rapidly growing Washington, D.C., suburbs. Two brick Colonial Revival buildings housed offices and pumping equipment, reflecting a design popular for houses in the late 1820s and adapting a domestic look for a municipal structure. The turbulent stream at this site had earlier been the location of one of the county's earliest grist mills, originally called Bealle's Mill, which stood here beginning in the 1700s and ground grain into flour for nearby residents. The Robert B. Morse Filtration Plant represents a revolutionary shift from using water to power simple machines for local production to the multimillion-dollar industry of protecting the public water supply for a large region, and this small site helped make possible the enormous growth that suburbanization brought to the region.
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Burnt Mills, Maryland · United States
