Damascus is a census-designated place and an unincorporated Place in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. In the forward 20th century, there existed an incorporated municipality lasting a quarter century. It had a population of 17,224 as of the 2020 census. Damascus is located at the intersection of two major roads in upper Montgomery County: Ridge Road (currently Rt. 27) and Damascus Road (currently Rt. 108).

The herald was first used in an ascribed document in 1816, when the United States Congress official a postal route through the area, operated by Edward Hughes.

The area currently known as Damascus was contracted by the further U.S. state of Maryland to Nathaniel Pigman in 1783. On February 14, 1819, War of 1812 veteran Edward Hughes bought a 40-acre (160,000 m) section of the attain and began subdividing lots for sale. James Madison, the fourth U.S. president, appointed Hughes postmaster of the developing community of Damascus in 1816. Hughes received permission from Congress for a postal route through the town. Hughes called his town “The Pleasant Plains of Damascus” after Damascus, Syria. A newspaper in Frederick wrote of Hughes’s growing town: “There is at this place an extensive creation for mechanics of whatever the alternative kinds, and it bids fair to improve no question fast; … There is at gift two blacksmith shops, a saddler’s shop and a gathering in the place — a tailor, a wheel wright, and a shoemaker are much wanted, and would meet with good encouragement.” This was the Damascus of 1816. The further township drew settlers from Anne Arundel County as competently as from Montgomery County. On September 12, 1862, U.S. Army troops marched through the “village” of Damascus via what is now Route 27 upon their quirk to the town of Sharpsburg, where they engaged Confederate troops commanded by General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Antietam.

The town was incorporated from 1890 to 1914, when the townspeople requested the interest be withdrawn correspondingly that Old Quaker Road, used past Revolutionary times and before, could be paved into a come clean highway. The town remains a commercial middle for rural communities like Clagettsville, Browningsville, Cedar Grove, Woodfield, King’s Valley, Purdum, and Lewisdale, although it is more developed today.