"Whistling Through Bowie" a Bowie Travel Page by grandmaR

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Prince George's County Police waiting at light

My knowledge of Bowie is primarily from driving through it on US 301. The traffic is terrible in Bowie.

I also knew it was the home of the Bowie Race Track and Bowie State University which is one of the University of Maryland schools that has traditionally been a black school.

I find that Bowie was first called Huntington City. The railroad station in town was named in honor of Governor Owen Bowie who was a local resident and was also coincidentally the president of the Baltimore and Potomac railroad. Huntington City was subsequently rechartered as Bowie.

After it was founded in 1870, it was finally incorporated as a town in 1916. It is now the largest municipality in Prince George's County, and the fourth largest city in the State of Maryland.

In 1959, after the firm of Levitt and Sons developed the residential comminity Belair at Bowie on the original colonial plantation of Governor Samuel Ogle the Town of Bowie annexed the properties, and then re-incorporated as a city in 1963.