Dundalk

Dundalk is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 62,306 at the 2000 census. In 1960 and 1970, Dundalk was the largest unincorporated community in Maryland.

The area now known as Dundalk was first explored by John Smith in 1608, when while conducting an expedition up the Chesapeake Bay he landed on the area known as the Patapsco Neck. Up until this time, the area was occupied by the tribes of the Susquehanna Indians.

In 1664 Thomas Todd of Virginia purchased 1,150 acres (4.7 km²) of land on the Patapsco Neck, this being the first deed in Baltimore County. The original house, “Todd’s Inheritance”, was burnt by the British during the War of 1812, Battle of North Point. After the war the house was rebuilt, and it still stands today as a historical landmark.

In 1895 Henry McShane, an immigrant from Ireland, established the McShane Bell Foundry on the banks of the Patapsco River in the then far southeastern outskirts of Baltimore. The foundry, today gone, manufactured cast iron pipes and furnace fittings. When asked by the Baltimore and Sparrows Point Railroad for a name of a depot for the foundry, which was on their rail line, he wrote Dundalk, after the town of his birth Dundalk, Ireland.

In 1916 the Bethlehem Steel Company purchased 1,000 acres (4 km²) of farmland, near the McShane foundry, to develop housing for its shipyard workers. The Dundalk Company was formed to plan a town in the new style, similar to that of the Roland Park area of Baltimore, excluding businesses except at specific spots and leaving land for future development of schools, playing fields, and parks. By 1917 Dundalk proper was founded, by then it had 62 houses, 2 stores, a post office, and a telephone exchange. Streets were laid out in a pedestrian-friendly open grid, with monikers like "Shipway," "Northship," "Flagship," and "Admiral." The two-story houses had steeply pitched roofs and stucco exteriors.

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