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. National Road travelers 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 credited by his daughter Elizabeth Herbert with showing the first rubber-tired buggy in Washington County at the Hagerstown Fair. In 1868, Lewis Spickler invented a new model horse-drawn sleigh at his father’s blacksmith shop, and the filing in the U.S. Patent Office said its improvements reduced draft, made overturning less likely, kept the horse from striking his heels against the sleigh, directed snow from the horse’s feet under the sleigh instead of into occupants’ faces, and made the sleigh easier to draw through snowdrifts.