Bowie

Understand

While Bowie's history goes back over a century, much of the city consists of ranch and Cape Cod homes built in the 1960s and 1970s as a planned community by Levitt & Sons, a noted real estate development company. Lately, Bowie has grown by annexing various developments that have sprouted up around the city's edge since the mid-1980s. The visitor can still find vestiges of historical Bowie—most notably, the railroads and horse farms that defined Bowie in the pre-Levitt era. One of America's oldest historically black universities is Bowie State University, located in Old Bowie.

Get in

By plane

• Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) is 20 miles southwest of Bowie via MD197 and MD295.
• Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) is 23 miles southwest of Bowie via US 50 (through Washington, D.C.).
• Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) is 45 miles west of Bowie via the Capital Beltway.

By train

MARC operates train service on its Penn Line to/from Baltimore and Washington, D.C.. Nearest station is Bowie State at 13900 Jericho Park Rd.

By bus

Metrobus B27 operates service to/from the New Carrollton Metro Station. For more information on riding the Metrorail and Metrobus, see Washington DC#Get_In.

Get around

By car

Bowie is best navigated by car.

By bicycle

The Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis Trail runs through the northern part of Bowie and there are various other networks of bike paths and on-street bike routes.

Unfortunately, Route 50 bisects the city and has few bike-friendly crossings.

Go next

• Greenbelt is a historic New Deal Town just next door with venues for live music and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center visitor center.
• College Park is home to the University of Maryland's largest campus.
• Washington, D.C.
• Annapolis
• Baltimore