In the 19th century, three major transportation developments took place: the National Pike, the railroads and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The Pike was completed in 1881 and ran to Wheeling, West Virginia. While the first railroad and the canal both started in 1828, the railroad was completed by 1842 and the canal by 1851. With the intensive development of transportation routes through the 19th century, Hagerstown's role as a transportation hub became more important. Eventually, the City was served by four railroads: the Baltimore and Ohio, the Western Maryland, the Norfolk and Western and the Cumberland Valley.

Throughout the Civil War, Hagerstown was a favorite staging center for the armies of both the North and South, as they traversed the region enroute to Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Following the Civil War, Hagerstown began to experience an economic boom which lasted from the 1880's through the 1920's. Flourishing manufacturing and transportation industries fueled the development of the City during this era. Hagerstown's downtown and surrounding residential historic districts are evidence of the sudden transformation of the former rural town into a thriving urban center.

Hagerstown began a solid tradition of planning for the future of the City in the mid-1960's, with a new plan developed in each succeeding decade to reflect evolving goals and development philosophies. The present plan was developed as an effort to update the 1988 Comprehensive Development Plan.

With the assistance of grants from the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Maryland Department of Transportation, the City hired ADE & Associates of Rockville, Maryland, in the spring of 1995, to help the Hagerstown Planning Commission draft a new Comprehensive Plan for the City of Hagerstown. ADE & Associates and the Planning Commission spent the next 19 months analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the region, discussing the goals of our community, and preparing the new plan. After four months of review, the Mayor and City Council adopted the Plan on April 29, 1997.

A key component of the planning process in the development of the 1997 Comprehensive Plan was the public input the City received at a special Comprehensive Plan Visioning Session on November 4, 1995. The City is grateful to the eighty-seven citizens who sacrificed their Saturday for a full day of community planning at the Otterbein United Methodist Church. Many of the ideas generated at the Visioning Session have been included as recommended strategies and policies in the Plan.