A War of Words Over a Changing Md. Landscape
Benefits of Rural Image Debated in Charles County

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 1, 2007

When trying to sell homes in Charles County, real estate agent Art Simpson likes to use one word: rural. "We still do have the rural flair," Simpson said, describing the fast-growing Southern Maryland county. "That's the reason they're here. That's the reason they've moved out of the city or the counties from the north."

But when developer Ray Mertz sells space in his planned technology park in Charles, he avoids that word. "I think we need to place an emphasis that this is more a suburban and urban area," he said.

The term rural has long been associated with Charles and the Washington region's other outlying counties. But as the area continues its outward expansion and rural landscapes morph into suburban ones, a war of words has taken shape.

To real estate agents, the county's rural identity is one of its biggest selling points. It is what has made Charles a popular Washington bedroom community, where more than half of its employed residents commute to jobs outside the county.

To county economic development officials trying to attract companies with high-paying jobs, the image of Charles as rural is an obstacle. To them, rural evokes tobacco farms, open fields and wooded land -- a pretty place to live but no place to base a company.

"People don't realize that we have the infrastructure," said Marcia Keeth, one of the county's economic development officers.

"When you say rural, they think they'll be out in the cornfield somewhere or a tobacco field somewhere, and there's not going to be a place to get their paper clips or paper or a supply of well-educated workers," Keeth said. "As long as we continue to define ourselves as rural, I think that we do perpetuate that image."

There are no official labels for counties, but demographers have loose definitions for the jurisdictions of the Washington region, said demographer Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

The District, Arlington and Alexandria are considered "principal cities," Lang said, because they are some of the region's largest economic and population centers. Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George's counties are considered "inner" or "mature" suburbs.

That leaves Virginia's Loudoun and Prince William counties, as well as Charles, Howard, Anne Arundel, Frederick, Calvert and St. Mary's counties in Maryland, as "emerging suburbs." Areas farther out -- Fauquier, King George, Stafford and Spotsylvania counties in Virginia -- are considered "exurbs," or places just beginning to transition into suburbs.

A community shifts from rural to suburban when its economy becomes linked to the regional economy, Lang said.

For Charles, the turning point was when its commuter population overwhelmed its farming population. This began in the 1970s and '80s and escalated in the past decade when the state bought out tobacco farms, which had been Southern Maryland's economic and cultural identity. Meanwhile, subdivisions were rapidly being built.

"The agricultural economy fades away so fast, and it becomes ornamental. So the heart of that county's economy is its proximity to the city and the inner suburbs," Lang said.

Today, northern Charles, made up of Waldorf, St. Charles, Bryans Road, Hughesville, Indian Head and La Plata, is undeniably suburban. There are shopping malls and restaurants, law firms and car dealerships.

"They sell it off as being rural, but it's really not. I mean, traffic is gridlocked. It's terrible," said Rita Moreland, 52, a mortgage loan officer who lives in Waldorf.

But there are rural areas within the county. Homes there are spread out on large wooded or grassy lots, horses trot across sprawling farms and gas stations are miles apart.

This is where Vincent Jameson, 72, was born and raised. "It's kind of quiet down through here," Jameson said as he shopped at Murphy's General Store in Port Tobacco. "You get to Waldorf, you get wild-bulls country. It's like D.C. up in there."

But because Charles is not as densely developed as the mature suburbs, it can lay claim to a dual status -- suburban and rural.

"It's not 'Green Acres.' It's not 'Goodbye, city life,' " Lang said. "It's an 'I'd like my cake and eat it, too,' kind of county."

Joanne Roland, the county's tourism director, said image is "something we're constantly fighting."

"We're not the country bumpkin people," she said. "We do have a lot of things to offer in our county. We've got housing, we've got employment opportunities and we've got wonderful rural areas."

The county's commissioners recently passed a measure to preserve at least 50 percent of open space from development. But the local government also has been adding amenities that make Charles more like established suburbs: a minor-league baseball stadium, parks and athletic fields, and hiking and biking trails.

County boosters are trying to project a "best of both worlds" image even as they tailor their messages based on who is listening.

Take, for example, the county's new slogan unveiled this year: "Where Eagles Fly." It was designed to stoke images of pristine wilderness, reminding people that bald eagles populate Charles's pine trees. Yet it also is meant to symbolize the county's economic prosperity and entrepreneurial spirit.

It is common for residents to believe their community is rural even after it has asserted itself as suburban, Lang said.

"There's kind of a lag for a generation where people don't really quite get it," he said. "You don't really know you're a full suburb of Washington or any region for a while. There's a sense that we still do things differently around here."

For a dose of suburban reality, Mertz suggested, wade into the weekend traffic along Charles's primary commercial corridor.

"If you've ever driven down Route 301 on a Saturday," he said, "it's kind of like driving down Rockville Pike at Christmastime."