Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Jessup, MD

Jessup is an unincorporated community and census-designated place that straddles the line between Anne Arundel County and Howard County in central Maryland, about 15 miles southwest of Baltimore and covering about 6 square miles.

The community traces its start to 1863 and is named for Jonathan Jessup, a civil engineer on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Jessup grew up around "Jessup's Cut," the deep hand-dug railroad cut through Merrill's Ridge on the B&O line, where work crews removed more than 200,000 tons of clay; inmates long called the area's prisons "the Cut" after it.

On early maps the place was called Pierceland, and it stood near Spurrier's Tavern, a stop on the old Baltimore-to-Washington post road that George Washington traveled regularly.

The 2020 census counted 10,535 people in Jessup, a jump of 47.6 percent from 7,137 in 2010, living in 1,797 households and 1,908 housing units.

More than half of Jessup's 2020 population, about 5,700 people, lived in institutional group quarters, reflecting the cluster of state correctional facilities in the community.

Jessup has hosted penal institutions since the mid-19th century; the Maryland House of Correction operated there until it closed in 2007, and state facilities including the Jessup Correctional Institution and Brockbridge Correctional Facility remain.

The Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, Maryland's maximum-security forensic psychiatric hospital, built in 1960, is located in Jessup.

Maryland's center of population in the 2010 census was located on the grounds of the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup.

Jessup is home to the Maryland Food Center, which includes the Maryland Produce Market and the Maryland Seafood Market, and its central location in the state has made it a major warehouse and food-distribution hub.