Linthicum, officially Linthicum Heights, is a quiet commuter suburb in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, sitting just north of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI). For most travellers it is a place to sleep before an early flight rather than a destination in its own right — but the village has a long history and a couple of genuine corners worth a look.
The community grew up around a stop on the old Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad, and the streets behind the modern strip malls still hold a cluster of clapboard farmhouses from that era. The Linthicum Heights Historic District preserves much of this original village fabric. The Benson–Hammond House, an 18th-century farmhouse on Poplar Avenue, is open as a small museum run by the Ann Arrundell County Historical Society.
Linthicum is divided into two communities — North Linthicum and Linthicum-Shipley — each on a stop of the Baltimore Light Rail line, which makes getting into downtown Baltimore or out to BWI very straightforward without a car. The town is also home to the William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History, which is exactly what it sounds like, and to the Friendship Annex, an NSA facility you cannot visit but can drive past.