If you know one fun fact about Germantown, it’s probably that the iconic 1970s hit by John Denver “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” is about a road that runs through Germantown. But how much do you actually know about that Country Road?

The portion of Clopper Road that resides between Germantown and Gaithersburg was known as McCubbin Mill Road — after the McCubbin Mill that lay on Great Seneca Creek — when Francis Cassat Clopper purchased the land on which it resided in 1812. He renovated the Mill in 1834, creating a profitable wool Mill that made his family fairly wealthy, and dedicated some of his farm land and stone to build the to the St. Rose of Lima Church. During the Civil War, his mill supplied woolen blankets to Union troops but also gave George Atzerodt a place to stay as he fled Washington, D.C. after the Lincoln Assassination. After the war, he led the charge for the B&O Railroad in this region, but died in 1868 shortly before it’s completion.

The land then fell to their daughter and son-in-law, who was at that time a famous engineer (he was the chief engineer for the C&O Canal and assistant on the B&O Railroad). By that time, the road had become known as Clopper Road, but it was not quite as we know it today.

During the early part of the 20th century, Clopper Road was connected with various segments of MD-117 in Gaithersburg and Boyds, becoming part of the state highway system in the 1950s. Its surroundings, however, remained fairly agricultural until the 1980s and 90s.

In the late 1960s, Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff — two married musicians living in Washington, D.C. — drove down Clopper Road to a Nivert family reunion in Gaithersburg. Despite the century of development since the time of Francis C. Clopper, the road was still very rural and Bill Danoff decided to compose a short song about their journey to kill the time. That song became “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in 1971 when John Denver helped them complete the song and performed it as a single.

Little remains of the landscape that Clopper owned and Denver sang about, but I still like to drive that old road sometimes and imagine what it must have been like for all those who came before.