Originally incorporated as the Town of Mechanicstown in 1751, the name of the town was changed to Thurmont by an act of Maryland General Assembly on January 18, 1894. This name change was due to several other nearby towns having similar names, such as Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and Mechanicsville, Maryland. Charles E. Cassell, editor of the local newspaper Catoctin Clarion was the one to suggest the name Thurmont and promoted debate about the name change in the Clarion. Some of the names considered included Beaufort, Eastmont, Glenmont, Monduru, Fern Glen, and Blue Point. Eventually, the options were pared down to two main contenders: Cassell's suggestion of Thurmont, and local real estate broker Charles Shipley's suggestion of Blue Mountain City, which he argued was "appropriate" and "pretty" during an address at a town meeting in December 1893. In the December 14, 1893 issue, the Clarion printed the following: "The name is a misnomer: it is harshness long drawn out; it is an antique minus the lacquer; the sentimentalism that cries out against a change lacks its correlative, poetry, and smacks of the catacombs; its prestine [sic] glory is effaced by the ruthless circumstance of immigration to improve condition; an hundred, yea, hundreds of grandsons now recount to strangers in other States how their grand-fathers drove a thriving trade in factory, forge and mill in Mechanicstown and then confess--Ilium fuit; Delenda est Carthago! [Troy is no more; Carthage must be destroyed!]"
