Spurrier's Tavern stood at the junction of two major colonial roads, now represented by U.S. 1 and Maryland Route 175 near Jessup. William Spurrier received a license to operate an ordinary in 1771 on land connected with his wife Ann Brown's inheritance. The location linked Baltimore, Annapolis, Georgetown, and routes toward the Potomac. Travelers needed food, beds, drink, fresh horses, repairs, and news, making the tavern both a commercial enterprise and an essential transportation station.

During the Revolutionary era, the crossroads carried soldiers, couriers, officials, and supplies. French troops returning north after the Yorktown campaign camped nearby, and the proprietor later received compensation from the government, probably for goods or services connected with military movement. Taverns could be crowded, politically charged spaces where military information traveled quickly. Their operations also depended on cooks, stable workers, servants, and enslaved laborers whose names rarely appear in travelers' diaries.

George Washington stopped at Spurrier's repeatedly between 1789 and 1798 while traveling between Mount Vernon and the federal government, first in New York and then Philadelphia. The marker credits at least twenty-five visits. On July 18, 1795, Washington recorded that he dined and lodged there and that his sick horse died. The brief entry captures the practical difficulties of presidential travel: long stages, weather, animal health, and dependence on public accommodations along ordinary roads.

The tavern later passed through the Spurrier and Calvert families. After 1815 it became known as Waterloo, commemorating Napoleon's defeat. As stagecoach traffic increased, the establishment expanded its stabling and horse-changing functions. A post office operated there under changing names, and the Baltimore-Washington Turnpike was aligned to preserve convenient access. The crossroads remained important because road travel converted distance into a series of manageable stops.

Railroad construction transformed that economy. Violence among workers damaged outbuildings in 1834, and the arrival of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Washington line undermined the stage business. A fire in 1835 ended the tavern's commercial life, although the building was repaired as a residence. It disappeared after the mid-nineteenth century, and later highway development erased the intimate scale of the old intersection.

The marker preserves no surviving tavern room; it restores a service point to a landscape dominated by automobiles and institutional development. Washington's dead horse makes the site memorable, but the deeper history is the infrastructure of movement. Spurrier's connected cities, supported armies and stages, and hosted travelers across political generations. Its story shows how independence and early national government relied on privately operated inns, roads, animals, and labor long before official transportation systems could carry a president.