In the woods of a conservative Western Maryland town of fewer than 4,000 people is an unlikely landmark of state LGBTQIA+ history.

The Lodge, a Boonsboro watering hole that resembles a log cabin, is Maryland’s oldest rural gay bar — one of a few remaining in the country, according to historians.

For about four decades, the Washington County venue has offered safety, escape and community to queer people far from large, liberal cities. Starting Friday night, The Lodge will close out Pride Month with one of its biggest parties of the year: a weekend of dancing, drinking and drag in celebration of Frederick Pride, held about 20 miles away in the area’s largest city.

Gay bars across the country have disappeared, squeezed by rising costs, shifting cultural norms and the rise of online dating. But historians say The Lodge’s survival reveals how such spaces remain vital to queer identity, belonging and visibility — especially in rural communities.

“These stories don’t say that there wasn’t bigotry or backlash, but they show that, even with that, people have sought to make sure that there was space for themselves,” said Ben Egerman, a librarian who researches Maryland’s LGBTQ+ history.

The origins of The Lodge date to the late 1970s, when local businessman Donald Pong transformed what was then the Deer Park Lodge from a shuttered restaurant and hunting lodge into a queer hot spot.

It joined a blossoming gay scene in nearby Hagerstown, where at least two other gay bars had previously opened, drawing people from as far as Virginia and West Virginia. A 1977 headline in the local newspaper declared Hagerstown “a mecca for gays.”

But while the city bars struggled to stay afloat, The Lodge thrived. Brian Ward, a young bartender in the venue’s early days, estimated that as many as 400 people — most of them gay men, but also many lesbians — would crowd into The Lodge on an average Friday or Saturday night, drinking $1 draft beers and dancing to disco music.

“Everybody that you knew went to the bar,” Ward said. “It was really the heart of the community.”

The Lodge offered a much different experience than a typical city bar, longtime patrons said. The owners greeted everyone and the bartenders knew the regulars by name. The venue’s remote location provided privacy and a sense of escape, freeing people to be themselves.

Jimmy Tyner was a closeted 19-year-old when he first visited The Lodge in 1982. Living in Brunswick, a small town in Frederick County, he didn’t know other queer people and never talked about his gay identity.

When Tyner walked into The Lodge that day, the sight of gay men gathered around a long bar, laughing and listening to disco music, felt like a revelation, he said.

“I remember being shocked that there are actually other gay people in the world,” Tyner said.

Tyner returned to The Lodge nearly every night it was open because it was the only place where he didn’t have to hide who he was. Within a few years, he started performing in drag shows there under the moniker Nicole James, launching a drag career that has lasted nearly four decades.

“It was an escape from the world I had been living in,” Tyner said.

Particularly in those early years, visiting the bar was sometimes risky. Tyner said that in the mid-1980s, a drag performer was beaten outside The Lodge. A few years later, a group of vandals slashed dozens of tires in the parking lot. Over the years, patrons have observed people shouting slurs from passing cars and pelting the building with paintballs, eggs and bottles.

Into the mid-1990s, The Lodge also experienced the toll of the AIDS epidemic. A number of entertainers, patrons and bartenders died from the disease, and Tyner estimated that he attended as many as four funerals a month during that time. The bar organized several AIDS benefits to raise money for local hospices and help patients pay for medical care, utilities and food.

For the generation that came of age after the AIDS crisis, The Lodge remained a vital lifeline. Kris Fair said growing up in Frederick in the early 2000s, he never experienced queer people living openly and happily until he visited the bar.

“It is an unbelievably uplifting experience to see people who look like me, who had the same feelings that I had, expressing themselves and it being so normal,” said Fair, who now serves as a state delegate and executive director of The Frederick Center, an LGBTQIA+ community organization. “I had spent my entire life being told by society that it wasn’t normal.”

As queer people have gained mainstream acceptance and found community through the internet in recent decades, some have worried that spaces like The Lodge have become less essential.

In Western Maryland, queer people now have opportunities for connection through book clubs, climbing clubs and community centers. Local straight bars, too, have become more hospitable to the LGBTQIA+ community. Longtime entertainers at The Lodge said that outside of special events like Pride, they’ve seen thinner crowds and slower business.

The Lodge was up for sale in 2018 when longtime patrons Bruce Logee and Barrie Milam stepped in to buy it. Milam said they did so in part because they understood what the bar meant to the community and wanted to keep it alive.

“The longer we’ve owned the bar, the more we’ve realized how important it is,” Milam said.

Milam acknowledged that The Lodge has had to evolve.

It’s now open just three nights a week: Wednesdays for karaoke, Fridays for drag and burlesque shows and Saturdays for themed parties. It also caters to a broader clientele of queer and straight patrons.

But drag performer Scott Rubel said the bar has also survived by remaining true to itself.

“It’s not in a big city, and I think that has been its gem,” said Rubel, who has performed as Araya Sparxx for 20 years. “It does feel like a home away from home. It is just a place to dance, enjoy a show, get a drink and enjoy your presence.”