A town where time stands still and marches on - Maryland Life, Nov-Dec 05

Pleasant Valley is not on any map.  But the lowland between South Mountaina nd Elk Ridge in southern Washington County is well-known to worshippers at the Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, to members of the Pleasant Valley Ruritan, to students and teachers at the Pleasant Valley Elementary School, and to all who use the Pleasant Valley Community Park.

"This valley has been well-named...and is one of the most picturesque sections of the state," wrote J. Thomas Scharf in his two-volume history of western Maryland published in 1882.  "The land is rich...Towns and villages dot the valley from end to end, and well-cared-for farmhouses meet the eye in every direction."

I first laid eyes on Pleasant Valley 20 years ago.  I had gone there to report and write what would be the frist of more than 100 columns (coincidentally called "Maryland Life") for the Washington Post's Maryland Weekly section. John Frye, whom I'd met when he was a seasonal ranger at the C & O Canal National Historical Park, was my guide. His family, of German stock, had been in the valley for three centuries, ever since his ancestors moved down from Pennsylvania, and he was rightly proud of his home. Twenty years later, it was time for me to revisit Pleasant Valley to gauge what had changed and what hadn't over the course of a generation along the country roads....