Bethesda

Bethesda is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, in the United States, lying just northwest of Washington, D.C. It is a major business and government centre of the Washington metropolitan region and a national centre for medical research, and the 2020 census counted 68,056 residents in about 34 square kilometres. The name comes from the Bethesda Meeting House, a Presbyterian church built in 1820 and rebuilt in 1849, which was itself named for the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. Before European settlement the area was the traditional territory of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank peoples, and a 710-acre land grant surveyed by Henry Darnall in 1694 was the first in what became Bethesda. A post office opened in 1852, and in 1871 postmaster Robert Franck renamed the settlement for the church. Growth accelerated after the National Naval Medical Center was built from 1940 to 1942 and the National Institutes of Health complex arrived in 1948, and the Red Line of the Washington Metro now serves the downtown.