On a Friday evening in Maple Lawn, the brick sidewalks fill with families walking from the farmers’ market toward dinner, and the conversations carry Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Punjabi between the boutiques. The Indians in Fulton, Maryland did not inherit an old neighbourhood. They helped build a brand new one, on land that was a turkey farm a generation ago, in a corner of Howard County that sits almost exactly between Washington and Baltimore.
The Place
Fulton is an unincorporated community in southern Howard County, tucked between U.S. Route 29 and the Patuxent River. Baltimore lies about 21 miles to the northeast, Washington roughly 19 miles south, and Columbia just 5 miles north. The town was established in 1882 and named after Charles C. Fulton, an editor of the Baltimore Sun.
For more than a century it was farmland and a scattering of churches. Then, in the early 2000s, a single development changed everything. Fulton’s population grew from 2,049 in 2010 to 5,916 in 2020, an increase of nearly 189 percent, one of the steepest jumps anywhere in the state.
How It Became Indian
The story of Indians in Fulton is, more than in most places, the story of one piece of ground. To understand the community you have to understand Maple Lawn, and to understand Maple Lawn you have to go back to a dairy farm.
From a turkey farm to a new town
In 1839 the Iager family began farming the land that would become Maple Lawn. By 1938 the farm was running a free-range turkey operation under the “Sho-Nuf” brand, and in 1970 it won a Progressive Breeders Dairy Award. For decades this was rural Howard County, the kind of place defined by its barns rather than its boulevards.
That changed slowly and then all at once. Through the 1990s the Iagers worked with developers to plan a new community on the farm. Greenebaum & Rose Associates, later in partnership with St. John Properties, proposed a dense mixed-use town built on the principles of traditional neighbourhood development, the planning philosophy modelled on small American towns of the late nineteenth century. The first residents moved into Maple Lawn in 2005.
Why Indian families came
What made Fulton attractive to Indian professionals was a rare combination of timing, location and schools. The new houses arrived just as a wave of Indian engineers, doctors and IT specialists in the Washington-Baltimore corridor were looking to trade up from townhouses and apartments into a walkable community with their own front porches.
Geography did the rest. Fulton sits in the middle of one of the densest concentrations of technical employment in the country. Fort Meade and the National Security Agency are a short drive east, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is practically next door in Laurel, and the biotech and federal contracting corridors of both metros are within commuting range. For an Indian family with a security clearance, a cyber background, or a job at a government contractor, Fulton put work in two directions within reach of one driveway. The same calculus has drawn Indian professionals to the I-270 side of the metro, in Clarksburg and Germantown.
The schools sealed it
Howard County’s public schools are among the best in Maryland, and that mattered enormously to a population that tends to organise family life around education. Reservoir High School, which serves Fulton, enrols around 1,700 students, roughly 18 percent of them Asian, and it consistently lands in the upper tier of state rankings.
Word travelled the way it always does in Indian-American networks, through colleagues, temple acquaintances and extended family. A cousin bought in Maple Lawn, then recommended it to a brother-in-law, who mentioned it to a co-worker at the next Diwali gathering. The pattern echoes what happened among Indian families in North Potomac on the Montgomery County side. Within a decade Fulton went from a place few South Asians had heard of to a name spoken with quiet pride in immigrant households across the corridor.
A community that arrived already affluent
Unlike older immigrant enclaves built on a first generation of strivers, Fulton’s Indian community largely arrived having already made it. The median household income in Maple Lawn runs well above $200,000, and many families bought new construction outright. This was not a beachhead. It was a destination, the place people moved to after a decade or two of building careers elsewhere in the region.
The Asian share of Fulton reached 25.7 percent in the 2020 census, with Indian-Americans making up a large part of that figure. On weekend mornings the trails around Maple Lawn fill with multi-generational families, grandparents in saris pushing strollers beside adult children in running gear.
The Landmarks
Ananda, 7421 Maple Lawn Boulevard, Fulton. Opened in 2014 by brothers Keir and Binda Singh, whose family hails from Punjab, Ananda brought the polish of Baltimore’s old Ambassador Dining Room to Maple Lawn’s main street. With wood panelling, stained glass and eight fireplaces, it is the rare suburban Indian restaurant that doubles as a special-occasion destination, and much of its produce comes from the family’s own farm less than a mile away.
Maplelawn Farmers’ Market, 7405 Maple Lawn Boulevard, Fulton. Held on the historic farm at the heart of the community, the Friday and Saturday market is where the neighbourhood meets itself. For Indian families it is a weekly ritual, a place to pick up fresh produce and let children run on the same ground that grew turkeys eighty years ago.
Masala Bazaar, 9050 Red Branch Road, Columbia. A short drive north, Masala Bazaar bills itself as the largest South Asian and Middle Eastern grocery in Howard County, with more than 3,000 products and a butcher’s counter stocking hard-to-find halal cuts. Owners Azad and Mona Shah opened it more than a decade ago, and for Fulton families it is the default stop for lentils, spices and frozen parathas.
Desi Bazaar, Columbia. Family-owned and serving the Columbia area since 2004, Desi Bazaar is the older of the corridor’s Indian grocers, the kind of shop where the owner remembers which regional pickle a customer asked after last month. It anchored the South Asian food scene here before Maple Lawn’s houses were even framed.
Sri Bhaktha Anjaneya Temple, 4143 Ayodhya Way, Ijamsville. Set on a 43-acre lot to the west, this Hanuman temple is one of the most ambitious in the region. In 2026 it received a 36-foot Vishwaroopa Anjaneya statue, shipped through the Port of Baltimore and raised at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, making it a pilgrimage point for families across the corridor.
Shri Mangal Mandir, 17110 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring. Established in 1981, this temple has served the growing Hindu population of the Washington-Baltimore area for more than four decades. Its Bal-Gokul programme, teaching children from kindergarten through twelfth grade, draws Fulton families who want their children grounded in language and tradition.
Sri Siva Vishnu Temple, 6905 Cipriano Road, Lanham. One of the older major temples in the region, with construction begun in 1988, it blends Pallava, Vijayanagara, Kerala and South Canara architectural styles. For South Indian families in Fulton, particularly Telugu and Tamil households, it remains a touchstone for the big festivals.
Where They Came From
The Indian families of Fulton come disproportionately from the south. Telugu households, many with roots in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and Tamil families from Tamil Nadu form a large share, drawn by the corridor’s appetite for software and engineering talent. Punjabi and North Indian families, like the Singh brothers behind Ananda, are also well represented.
Most did not come to Fulton directly from India. They arrived in America for graduate school or on work visas, settled first in apartments around Columbia, Laurel or Silver Spring, and moved to Maple Lawn once careers and green cards were secure. The chain that brought them ran less from a single Indian village than from a shared professional class spread across the DC-Baltimore technology and federal economy.
Fulton Today
Today Fulton is one of the more quietly diverse affluent communities in Maryland, and its Indian residents are woven into ordinary suburban life rather than set apart from it. Maple Lawn now holds roughly 3,140 homes, more than 1.7 million square feet of office space and an open-air business district where an Indian fine-dining room sits a few doors from a coffee shop and a wine bar.
The community is young, in the sense that almost no one here is from here. There is no century-old gurdwara, no founding generation buried in a local cemetery. What there is instead is a neighbourhood being made in real time, where the first children to grow up in Maple Lawn are now finishing at Reservoir High and heading off to college.
For a certain kind of Indian-American family, that newness is the appeal. Fulton offered the chance to put down roots in a place with no inherited hierarchy, where a family that arrived in 2008 carries as much history as anyone. The temples are a drive away and the grocers cluster in Columbia, but the front porches, the schools and the Friday market are right here, and increasingly they feel like home.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Indians live in Fulton, Maryland?
The Census does not publish a separate count for Indians in Fulton, but Asians made up 25.7 percent of the town’s 5,916 residents in 2020, and Indian-Americans form a large part of that share. The community is concentrated in the Maple Lawn development.
Why did so many Indian families move to Fulton?
The Indians in Fulton, Maryland were drawn by the new Maple Lawn community, top-ranked Howard County schools, and a location midway between Washington and Baltimore that puts Fort Meade, the NSA, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the region’s biotech and federal contracting jobs within reach.
Where do Indian families in Fulton worship?
There is no Hindu temple in Fulton itself, but families attend Sri Bhaktha Anjaneya Temple in Ijamsville, Shri Mangal Mandir in Silver Spring, and Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Lanham, all within driving distance of the corridor.
Where can you buy Indian groceries near Fulton?
The nearest large Indian grocers are in Columbia, about five miles north. Masala Bazaar on Red Branch Road is the largest South Asian store in Howard County, and Desi Bazaar has served the area since 2004.
What is Maple Lawn in Fulton?
Maple Lawn is a master-planned, mixed-use community built on a former Iager family turkey farm, with its first residents arriving in 2005. It holds about 3,140 homes plus offices, shops and restaurants, and it is the heart of Fulton’s Indian community.
Is Fulton a good place for Indian families?
For many it is. The Indians in Fulton, Maryland benefit from strong schools, a walkable affluent community, high household incomes, and access to the technical and government jobs that anchor the Washington-Baltimore corridor.
If your family’s story passed through Fulton, or any of the places Indians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Andhra Pradesh or a town in Tamil Nadu, to a front porch in Maple Lawn, to wherever you are now.