places Occupying a middle ground between incorporated and unincorporated areas are Special Tax Districts, quasi-municipal unincorporated areas created by legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly. They lack home rule authority and must petition the General Assembly for changes affecting the authority of the district. There are eight Special Tax Districts in the county: Bel Air Bowling Green Cresaptown Ellerslie La Vale McCoole Mount Savage Potomac Park Other census-designated places in the county include: Barrelville Bier Borden Shaft Bowmans Addition Carlos Clarysville Corriganville Danville Dawson Detmold Eckhart Mines Flintstone Franklin Gilmore Grahamtown Klondike Little Orleans Midlothian Moscow National Nikep Ocean Oldtown Pleasant Grove Rawlings Shaft Spring Gap Vale Summit Woodland Zihlman Unincorporated communities Amcelle Dickens Evitts Creek George's Creek Loartown McKenzie Narrows Park Pinto Town Creek Government and infrastructure Current government The Allegany County Government is governed by a 3-member board of County Commissioners. Libraries The library system was created in 1960, when libraries in Cumberland, Frostburg, LaVale, Pennsylvania Avenue School, and Westernport were merged to form a unified library system. The first of the libraries which would make up the library system was the Washington Street library, founded in 1924. The most recent addition to the library system was the Georges Creek library, which opened in March 2001. The Allegany County Library System currently has six branches: Frostburg Library, Georges Creek Library, LaVale Library, South Cumberland Library, Washington Street Library, and Westernport Library. Infrastructure The North Branch Correctional Institution, (opened 2003), and the earlier adjacent Western Correctional Institution are operated by the Division of Corrections of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, (with its headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland) is located in an unincorporated area of Allegany County, just southwest of Cumberland. The prison housed male death row inmates, who were moved from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center, from June 2010 until death row was closed in 2014. Politics Allegany County was granted a home rule form of government in 1974. It is a strongly Republican county, the last Democrat to win a majority being Jimmy Carter in 1976. The only other Democrats to carry the county since 1880 have been Lyndon B. Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt (twice), and by very narrow margins Harry S. Truman in 1948 and Woodrow Wilson in 1912. |} Transportation Allegany County has been, since colonial times, an important node on the nation's transportation network as a key transition point in the