Montgomery County officials broke ground Thursday on a new fire station at the corner of Shady Grove Road and Darnestown Road, WAMU reported.

The Travilah Fire Station will serve the Gaithersburg-Rockville-North Potomac region which has grown rapidly since a temporary station was opened decades ago, fire chief Richard Bowers told WAMU.

"We used to call it the little green house on the prairie, because the only thing that was here was the fire station," says Bowers. "There was nothing behind us."

The Travilah station will sit across from the University of Maryland, Shady Grove campus, with the county's Life Sciences Center and Shady Grove Adventist Hospital nearby.

The new station is approximately 4 miles west of Rockville Volunteer Fire Dept. Station 31, located at 12100 Darnestown Road near Quince Orchard, and more than 5 miles from Gaithersburg-Washington Grove Volunteer Fire Dept. Station 8, located at 801 Russell Avenue.

Read the full story on WAMU's website.