Like many of her neighbors, Heather Salazar was scanning the Maryland map for towns along the MARC train line when she became curious about the riverside enclave of Savage.
But residents of Savage say there’s more to their town than its convenient location. They love the area for the blend of rural and urban energy, its rich history and the tightknit community dedicated to preserving it.
“It was actually kind of a fluke that I found this area,” said Salazar, who lived in southeast Ohio before settling in a Savage apartment in 2019. “But I couldn’t be more grateful.”
In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated 7,500 people lived in unincorporated Savage, at the confluence of the Little and Middle Patuxent rivers in southeastern Howard County.
The website for the Savage Community Association proudly states that “a rich vein of American industrial history flows through” the town. It traces those industrial roots to the 1820s, when construction began on Savage Mill, which would later become a powerhouse in textile manufacturing.
Today, the mill is a unique shopping and dining destination. It has more than 80 businesses, from coffee shops and restaurants to a martial arts school, a bridal store and a clay studio.
People travel to the mill to take classes at the Savage Fencing Club and zip line at Terrapin Adventures, a massive outdoor playground with a ropes course, climbing tower and giant swing. There’s an annual bluegrass festival and regular trivia and karaoke events.
Just up the street, though, residents say there’s plenty of quiet. Savage Park backs up to the river, where trails wind beside the water.
“In many ways, it’s an area of contrasts,” said Susan Garber, a board member of the Savage Community Association who served as its director for about a decade. She’s lived in Savage for 34 years and was originally drawn in by the availability of a parcel of land overlooking the water.
Despite the town’s proximity to major highways and the bustle of the mill, Garber said, solitude is easy to come by.
“You can walk in the park and you don’t hear the traffic,” she said. “Instead, you’re hearing water flowing over the rocks or the falls, and you feel like you’ve walked into a different world.”
Salazar said that while MARC access brought her to Savage, the town’s natural features and fascinating past have kept her there.
She began researching Savage history during the pandemic and has since become involved with the town’s historic society, helping digitize records and lead walking tours.
The housing stock in Savage is varied and includes multistory and ranch-style single-family homes, townhouses and multifamily units that were built for mill hands but are now apartments.
Since the mid-1970s, the Savage Mill complex and several blocks of houses built for mill workers have been on the National Register of Historic Places.
Next to the mill is Bollman Truss Railroad Bridge — the namesake of the local elementary school and, according to a report to the State Highway Administration, the last surviving truss of its kind. It, too, is a recognized historical and engineering landmark.
The town’s history includes a brief foray as a year-round Christmas village: Harry Heim, a Baltimore businessman who bought Savage Mill in the late 1940s, imported reindeer to live in the town square, strung every tree with lights and arranged for Santa to arrive by helicopter for his experiment’s grand opening, the mill’s website says. (The village shut down after about two years.)
Carroll Baldwin Hall, a century-old community center, is among residents’ most beloved spots. The building dates to the early 1920s, and was constructed in honor of Carroll Baldwin, a former supervisor of Savage Mill.
Some Savage residents still remember when there was a bowling alley in the basement of the hall and regular community dances with hot dogs and sodas for a quarter.
It’s still a hub for neighborhood life today, thanks in large part to thousands of hours of volunteer restoration, said Sara Vermillion, a longtime Savage resident and president of the Carroll Baldwin Memorial Institute.
“It’s a never-ending project,” Vermillion said, “but it’s just particularly dear to us.”
She fondly recalls one summer when, before the building even had air conditioning, dozens of residents spent their free afternoons and evenings repairing windows and replastering and repainting the interior.
Older volunteers, who couldn’t navigate the ladders required to work on the 22-foot vaulted ceilings, dropped off picnic lunches and fresh lemonade for them.
Now, the hall serves as a focal point for residents’ lives, often hosting baptisms, anniversary celebrations, quinceañeras and events put on by the community association and historical society. It’s also rented out for weddings and private events.
At a centennial celebration for the hall in 2022, Salazar and other volunteers helped organize 1920s-style games for local children to play, including jacks, dominoes and cat’s cradle.
Kevin Burke, who is raising his 2-year-old daughter in Savage, said he treasured the community events that will be available for her.
There’s the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, to which townspeople are summoned with the bell that used to call mill hands to work. There’s a townwide Easter egg hunt, an annual plant sale and ice cream socials.
Families with young children are also drawn to Savage’s parks and walking-distance elementary and middle schools, Burke said.
Burke moved to the neighborhood in 2012, purchasing a fixer-upper that had been on the market for a year.
“The more I looked at the neighborhood, the more I just decided that I had to have it, regardless of what needed fixing,” he said.
Living there: Sixteen homes sold in Savage in 2023, with an average sales price of $468,188, said Northrop Realty agent Brian Saver. The most expensive was a five-bedroom, three-and a-half-bathroom single family home that sold for $600,000. The least expensive was a two-bedroom, one-and a-half-bathroom duplex that sold for $310,000.
As of Jan. 30, only one home in Savage was on the market, Saver said. It was a four-bedroom, three-and a-half-bathroom townhouse listed for $560,000.
Schools: Children in Savage attend Bollman Bridge Elementary School, Patuxent Valley Middle School and Hammond and Guilford Park high schools. (Guilford Park High School will eventually be the only high school serving Savage. It opened in August 2023 with freshmen and sophomores and will phase in higher grades over the next two years.)
Transit: The Savage MARC station, on the Camden Line, is about a five-minute drive from the neighborhood. Residents can access MARC’s Penn Line via the Odenton station, which is about a 13-minute drive away. Both lines service Union Station in Washington. Howard County’s 503 and 409 bus routes have stops in and around the community, which sits between Interstate-95 and Route 32.
