Looking for a great new eight-mile hidden back route into the city? Jenifer-Thornton-Bellona is just the ticket, and it didn’t even exist a few years ago. It starts at the edge of the semi-unspoiled countryside, trods through the woods, passes fairly tasteful upscale suburbia, proceeds through rich blueblood estate country and ends at a convenient well-worn urban crossroads.

Considering that nowadays, most new roads through new developments are designed only to serve themselves and nothing else, it’s amazing this ever got built at all. When the last piece was recently put in place, the older roads on either side suddenly became part of something bigger, even if most people still don’t realize it. Until someone comes up with a better portmanteau word, we’ll call it “Jenithorntollona.”

The outer northernmost mile and a half is Jenifer Road, beginning at Padonia Road about halfway between Falls Road and Interstate 83. Jenifer Road starts as a quintessential Baltimore County country byway, the kind that can be a religious experience – and if so, historic Mays Chapel is right there for your consecration. This is at the corner of Mays Chapel Road, which is best known because the adjacent golf club tried but failed to make part of it their own private domain a few years ago.

For its entire long history, little Jenifer Road has always ended at Timonium Road, but amazingly just a few years ago, Thornton Road sprung up just to the southeast to keep the road going southward. Previously, most of that land was part of the hundred-acre Selsed estate, but the new road was built when the estate was carved into subdivisions. The last hurrah of Selsed’s hundred acre glory happened in the early ’90s when it was the Baltimore Symphony Decorator Showhouse. The Selsed House still overlooks the new tract houses. It’s the kind of apparition you see in the movies as some sort of cinematic metaphor, while wondering if its a camera trick.

You can’t see Selsed House from Thornton Road, but you do see an elevation drop of nearly 300 feet, heightening the experience of travelling through different worlds against the expected suburban grain. South of Seminary Road, the old Thornton Road picks up again, which has existed since at least the 1950s or longer through Riderwood past several spectacular mansions.

At Joppa Road, you again shift to the east (just remember to shift left at the two jogs if travelling southbound or right if northbound) and pass over the light rail tracks to continue southward on Bellona Avenue.



Bellona also goes north from Joppa, but this is a fake connection; the real Bellona was cut off by the Beltway construction in the 1950s and picks up again in Lutherville. Nearby Charles Street was similarly transmuted by the Beltway, which is why there are three (count ’em three) intersections called Bellona and Charles.

South of Joppa, Bellona continues downward to Lake Roland until the full decent reaches almost 400 feet from the high point on Jenifer. Then as Bellona pulls away from the lake, the road begins to climb again and so do real estate values, offering some of the most spectacular mansions in the region, until it reaches the original authentic intersection of Bellona and Charles.

Beyond Charles, Bellona approaches the city line with the purposeful but attractive urbanization typified by a neo-colonial convenience store. Finally, we end at York and Bellona, once “the best place to become a Chevrolet ownah” before Jerry’s Chevy dealership moved out to Joppa Road. That was when it was Govanstown, the commercial center of North Baltimore; now it’s Govanstowne.

Baltimore seems like a different place after this eight mile ride into the city. This route makes it seem like the countryside and the suburbs actually relate to the city, and Govanstown seems like a meaningful culmination of it all instead of just another urban neighborhood. But we know all that is an illusion, just as the rest of the world is also distorted by speed and the glare of the windshield, and that reality is only the collective result of all our individual distortions.