Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Gaithersburg, MD

Gaithersburg is an incorporated city in Montgomery County, Maryland, northwest of Washington, D.C., in the Washington metropolitan area.

Gaithersburg was settled in 1765 as a small agricultural settlement known as Log Town near present-day Summit Hall, on Ralph Crabb's 1725 land grant called Deer Park.

The community took its name from Benjamin Gaither, who built his home on the land in 1802 and married Margaret Brooke, inheriting part of Henry Brooke's land.

Gaithersburg was officially incorporated as a town on April 5, 1878, shortly after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built its Victorian station there in 1873, and it was upgraded from a town to a city in 1968.

In 1899 Gaithersburg was selected as one of six global locations for an International Latitude Observatory to measure the Earth's wobble on its polar axis, and the Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory is the city's only National Historic Landmark.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, known as NIST, is headquartered in Gaithersburg directly west of Interstate 270.

Other major employers in Gaithersburg include AstraZeneca and Lockheed Martin, and the city is also the location of the garrison of the United States Army Reserve Legal Command.

The 2020 United States census counted 69,657 people in Gaithersburg, making it the third-largest incorporated city in Maryland, up from 59,933 in 2010.

The 2020 census counted 25,908 households and 27,182 housing units in Gaithersburg, with a median age of 36.7 years.

Gaithersburg remained a predominantly rural farm town until the 1970s, when suburban construction spread homes across the area and it became one of the most economically and ethnically diverse places in Maryland.