Bentley Springs

Bentley Springs, a small village in upper Baltimore County four miles below the Mason-Dixon line and thirty-one miles north of Baltimore City, was once a major destination from Baltimore along the Northern Central Railroad. The valley’s hillsides were dotted with springs “of the purest water,” and in 1837 the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad obtained a right of way through it. In 1858, Charles Bentley and his wife Anna bought land from the estate of James Calder and named it Bentley's Springs. Five different types of water “of great medicinal value” were found there, and in the 1930s water from the springs was bottled and shipped by rail to Washington and Philadelphia for use in office building coolers. Charles Bentley, an iron manufacturer in Baltimore who established the Baltimore Steam Boiler Works, and his wife undertook a substantial building program, first erecting a one-story fieldstone railroad station, then building their mansion, “Sunnyside,” opposite the station, and then constructing the forty-room hotel “Glenn House,” with lavish appointments and a marble courtyard. Bentley Springs soon became a popular summer resort, with hundreds of visitors arriving by train each summer. The hotel burned on Nov. 7, 1868, and afterward Bentley leased a site on the other side of the railroad to a company that built a twenty-two-room mansion called “The Boarding House.” That building later served as a retreat for disabled soldiers and finally as apartments until it was razed in the 1950s. During the late 1800s Bentley Springs was quite prosperous, as farmers hauled lime, fertilizer, and produce to the railroad, saw mills turned out lumber and railroad ties, and paper and grist mills flourished because of the abundant water. Although most of Bentley Springs’ historic buildings have long disappeared, the area still retains much of the healthy country atmosphere that Charles Bentley discovered there years ago.

Maryland · United States