Beginning in 1860, Sterling started as a railroad stop known as Guilford and served local farmers, with trains carrying grain, produce, and dairy products to eastern markets and returning with merchandise and mail. Passengers rode the trains to school, to shop and visit, and many commuted to jobs in Washington, D.C. In the 1890s, after financier J.P. Morgan bought the line, he supposedly gave Sterling its name because of his banking interests. A small close-knit community grew up around the station, with airy wooden homes on the north side of the tracks and businesses on the south side including a mercantile store, a mill, and a meat market. One two-story residence built in the early 1850s became known as the Summer White House when President James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861, brought his family there to escape the heat of Washington in the summers of 1859 and 1860. The house later operated for many years as a hotel and an antique shop, but it was demolished in the 1980s. By 1967, Sterling had grown from its railroad origins into a large residential development, and little remains of Old Sterling.