Madonna of the Trail (Bethesda)

Bethesda's Madonna of the Trail is the only one of twelve identical pioneer-mother monuments that faces east. The Daughters of the American Revolution commissioned the statues along the National Old Trails Road in 1928 and 1929, to a design by St. Louis sculptor August Leimbach. Bethesda's was dedicated on 19 April 1929 before about 5,000 people, and the Federal Highway Administration records Harry S. Truman, then a Missouri county judge and head of the National Old Trails Road Association, among the speakers. The Maryland State Society DAR says the monument marks the spot where pioneers spent their first night out of Georgetown, and its inscriptions refer to General Braddock's march in 1755.

The DAR text reproduced by Bethesda Magazine describes a 10-foot figure on a 6-foot base, 18 feet above ground, of poured algonite stone with Missouri granite aggregate; the DAR's historic-sites page lists the construction as marble.