Three exits to Interstate 270 [I-270] are less than one mile away, the Maryland Area Regional Commuter train is within walking distance, and the Germantown Transit Center that provides Ride On shuttle service to the Shady Grove station of the Washington Metro's Red Line is also available.

[10] Although it avoided much of the physical destruction that ravaged other cities in the region, the Civil War was still a cause of resentment and division among residents of Germantown.

In contrast, other residents of Germantown owned slaves, and even those who were not slave-owners had sons fighting for the Confederate Army.

As a result, many people in Germantown, who had been on friendly terms with each other, made an effort not to interact with each other, such as switching churches, or frequenting a store or mill miles away from the ones they would normally do business with.

[11] Late in the summer and fall of 1861, there were more than twenty thousand Union soldiers camped to the west of Germantown, in neighboring Darnestown and Poolesville.

In September 1862 and in June 1863, several regiments of Union Army soldiers marched north on Maryland Route 355, on their way to the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg, respectively.

In July 1864, General Jubal Early led his army of Confederate soldiers down Maryland Route 355 to attack the Union capital of Washington, D.C.

[13] He was living in Port Tobacco during the Civil War, and supplementing his meager income as a carriage painter by smuggling people across the Potomac River in a rowboat.

On April 14, 1865, Booth gave Atzerodt a gun and told him that he was to kill U.S. Vice President Andrew Johnson, which he refused to do.

Atzerodt was tried, convicted and hanged on July 7, 1865, along with co-conspirators Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, and David Herold at Washington, D.C.'s Fort McNair.

In 1868, a one-room schoolhouse was built on Maryland Route 118, near Black Rock Road, which hosted children from both Germantown and neighboring Darnestown.

[17] In 1935, professional baseball player Walter Perry Johnson, who played as a pitcher for the Washington Senators (now the Minnesota Twins), purchased a farm on what is now the site of Seneca Valley High School.

[20] The cement silos were removed by the county in 1986 to make way for the MARC Germantown train station commuter parking lot.

[21] In January 1958, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was relocated from its location in downtown Washington, D.C., to Germantown, which was considered far enough from the city to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack.

[22] The facility now operates as an administration complex for the U.S. Department of Energy and headquarters for its Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

[27] During the 1970s, Wernher von Braun, a German rocket scientist during World War II, worked for the aerospace company Fairchild Industries, which had offices in Germantown, as its vice president for Engineering and Development.

[31] Since the early 1980s, Germantown has experienced rapid economic and population growth, both in the form of townhouses and single-family dwellings, and an urbanized "town center" has been built.

[39] On August 14, 2011, a 7-Eleven convenience store in downtown Germantown fell victim to a flash mob robbery of nearly forty people.

[43] In August 2017, Brandi Edinger initiated efforts to crowdfund the repurposing of the historic Cider Barrel as a bakery via Kickstarter, but failed to meet the $80,000 goal set.

[44] On January 1, 2020, it was reported that plans are underway to reopen the Barrel in the spring of that year after it was closed for nearly two decades.

[47] Its location above the Fall Line in the Piedmont region gives it slightly lower temperatures than cities to the south and east such as Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring.

Maureen Hendrick's Field at Championship Stadium hosts many amateur, collegiate, and regional soccer and lacrosse tournaments.

[36] The Montgomery County Road Runners Club annually hosts the Riley's Rumble Half Marathon & 8K that starts and finishes in the SoccerPlex.

[70] The GHS office and future museum is located in the historic Germantown Bank (1922) at 19330 Mateny Hill Road, across from the MARC railroad station.

The main fundraiser for the organization is the Germantown Community Flea Market, held on the first Saturday of the month April through November in the MARC parking lot, Rt.

[71] The Germantown Pulse covers a wide range of topics, including sports, schools, crime, music, and other events of note in the area.

[74] Germantown also has a station on the MARC train's Brunswick Line, which operates over CSX's Metropolitan Subdivision.

If constructed, the system would connect the terminal of the Washington Metro Red Line, Shady Grove station in nearby Derwood to Germantown and continue northward to Clarksburg.

[80][81] Germantown is featured in several episodes of the U.S. television series The X-Files, notably as a hotbed for biomedical engineering and research, as in reality.

The show's creator, Chris Carter, stated that he decided to set several episodes in Germantown as his brother used to live in the town.