Sources and rules
Sources, credits and rules
MoCo 3D is a free guide to food and things to do in Montgomery County, Maryland, with an optional 3D map, all built from public data. This page lists what it is built from, the credits those sources ask for, and the rules the site follows. Last checked 2026-11-13.
Independence
Independent project. Not affiliated with Montgomery County Government.
MoCo 3D is made by one person, Nigel, under the NigelBuilds name. No government body sponsors, approves or endorses it, and it uses no County seal, flag or logo. The County’s open-data terms ask for exactly that: users of the data must not represent or imply that the County is participating in, affiliated with, or has sponsored, approved or endorsed their use of it.
Montgomery County open-data disclaimer
Montgomery County, Maryland requires applications that use data from its open-data portal to carry the following disclaimer. It is reproduced below word for word.
"The data made available here has been modified for use from its original source, which is Montgomery County, Maryland ("the County"). THE COUNTY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY, OR TIMELINESS OF ANY DATA. THE COUNTY EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE COUNTY MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY AS TO THE WEBISTE OR APPLICATION USING DATA DRAWN FROM DATA.MONTGOMERYCOUNTYMD.GOV OR FOR THE USEFULNESS OR INTEGRITY OF THE WEB SITE OR APPLICATION. The data is subject to change and possible deletion, temporarily or permanently. It is understood that the information contained in the web feed is being used at one's own risk."
31b73edc859e7f05… (full: 31b73edc859e7f0592a78156a83179cbb6f11a34ffdbd0553a80049a99043d26). The misspelling “WEBISTE” is the County’s own and is left as published.Full terms: data.montgomerycountymd.gov/terms-of-use. Montgomery Planning’s own site terms are at montgomeryplanning.org/terms-of-use; they contain no separate attribution sentence for its GIS data, and we show the County wording for all County-sourced data as a precaution.
Food, things to do and events
- Food places: Montgomery County food inspection data (dkrp-gr48), Public DomainEvery food business the county has inspected since July 2024. The list comes from the county’s data set “HHS - Food Inspection Data from July 2024 and onward” (dkrp-gr48 on dataMontgomery), whose licence field says Public Domain, used under the county terms and disclaimer below. In this build: 4,768 establishments, 3,461 of them places the public can eat or buy food at, checked Nov 13, 2026. Inspection records are shown as the county wrote them, with the inspection date and a link to the county record. They are not a rating and not today's conditions. Kitchens the public cannot walk into (schools, care homes, caterers) are kept out of browsing. The county’s owner column is never copied.
- Food categories: inferred, not verifiedThe county does not record cuisine. Category tags are inferred from the business name by fixed rules, or taken from OpenStreetMap, and are not verified. In this build 201 places take their category from OpenStreetMap. Each food page says which of the two it is.
- Things to do: © OpenStreetMap contributors and Montgomery County PlanningParks, playgrounds, trails, libraries, museums and other places come from OpenStreetMap, available under the Open Database License (ODbL), and from Montgomery County Planning’s Places of Interest layers (map service, Planning open-data hub), which ask for attribution to the Montgomery County Planning Department. In this build: 1,296 places (OpenStreetMap 1,133, Montgomery County Planning 135, Montgomery Parks (M-NCPPC) 28), checked Nov 13, 2026. Because OpenStreetMap data is ODbL, our things-to-do file is offered under ODbL too. A tag such as Free, Kids or Dogs is shown only when the source states it, with the reason next to it.
- Events: official calendars, linked outEvents come from calendars the organizers publish as feeds. We keep the title, date and time, venue, town and a link to the organizer's page, and nothing else. We do not copy descriptions, pictures or flyers, and “Free” is shown only when the feed says so. Public meetings and office closures are left out. Times are shown in Montgomery County time. Events change and get cancelled: check the organizer’s page before you go. Feeds in this build (checked Nov 13, 2026): Montgomery County Public Libraries, City of Gaithersburg, Town of Kensington.
- Calendars we looked at and do not use
- Montgomery County Government calendar: No RSS, iCal or public API found; robots.txt disallows /events.
- Montgomery Parks (incl. Brookside Gardens): No event feed: ?ical=1 returns the web page and the events REST route does not exist. The only RSS is the news blog.
- Montgomery County Recreation: No event feed found; programs live in a registration system.
- City of Rockville: robots.txt disallows AI retrieval site-wide; this list was built with an AI agent, so the site was not probed further.
- City of Takoma Park: An RSS calendar exists, but the site's robots.txt disallows named AI crawlers; this site is built with an AI agent, so the feed is not used.
- Town of Poolesville: An RSS calendar exists, but the site's robots.txt disallows named AI crawlers; this site is built with an AI agent, so the feed is not used.
- Montgomery College: RSS and iCal exist, but the college's disclaimer forbids redisplay other than for personal or educational use.
- Strathmore: The site answers automated clients with a bot check (HTTP 403). Not bypassed.
- Glen Echo Park: No RSS or iCal feed advertised; ?ical=1 returns the web page.
- BlackRock Center for the Arts: No event feed found.
- AFI Silver Theatre: No event feed found.
- Visit Montgomery: Not used: bulk reuse is not authorized.
- Hours are not listedHours are not listed. Check with the business before you go. We have no source for opening hours that carries a date, so we show none. The same goes for prices, ratings and reviews.
- No content from Google or YelpNo content from Google or Yelp: no listings, photos, hours, ratings or reviews. Nothing is ranked, rated or paid for. Lists are in A to Z, distance or date order.
- Share imagesThe preview image for a shared link is drawn by this site from the same records. It uses the Geist typeface (Geist, SIL Open Font License). A place photo appears on it only when the place has a Wikimedia Commons photo, with the credit drawn on the image.
Map credits
- Source: Montgomery County PlanningBuilding footprints and related County GIS layers, published by Montgomery Planning (GIS and mapping).
- Montgomery County open data portalConstruction-permit records come from data.montgomerycountymd.gov, used under the terms and disclaimer above. They are shown as “permit on file as of” a date, see the rules below.
- © OpenStreetMap contributorsRoads, water, parks, place names and other basemap features are derived from OpenStreetMap. The data is available under the Open Database License (ODbL); see openstreetmap.org/copyright. This credit follows the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s attribution guideline, which lists “© OpenStreetMap contributors” as an accepted form.
- Protomaps © OpenStreetMapThe basemap is built with the open-source Protomaps basemap tooling and served as a PMTiles file from this site. Protomaps documents its basemap as an ODbL Produced Work with OpenStreetMap attribution required (docs).
- Credit: U.S. Geological SurveyTerrain comes from the USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), clipped to the county. USGS-produced data is in the U.S. public domain; USGS asks that credit be given (copyrights and credits). This site is not endorsed by USGS and does not use the USGS logo.
- Credit: MD iMAP, DoIT, State of Maryland (aerial imagery, flown 2023)The aerial photo ground is Maryland’s statewide six-inch imagery, flown over Montgomery County in 2023. It is streamed to your browser directly from the State’s public image service (service); this site does not store or re-host it. The photos show the ground as it was in 2023, not as it is today. The text labels come from OpenStreetMap, and the county outline from the U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2026 boundary (public domain). If the State service is unavailable the map falls back to USDA NAIP imagery from USGS The National Map (public domain), or to the plain map style.
Open-source software used in the browser includes MapLibre GL JS, the PMTiles library and three.js; each is used under its own licence.
What is real and what is generated
- Buildings: real roofs, generated wallsRoofs are real aerial photos (Maryland six-inch imagery, 2023). Walls, windows and doors are generated from each building's size and height and are not the real facades. The roof photos come from the same State of Maryland service credited above (MD iMAP six-inch imagery) and show each roof as it was in 2023.
- Tree canopy 2023: Montgomery County Planning DepartmentTree positions follow the county's 2023 canopy map. Tree shapes and heights are generated, not measured. The positions come from Montgomery County Planning’s 2023 tree canopy map (tree canopy 2023 map service). A tree on this site marks where there was canopy in 2023; it is not a survey of single trees.
- Place photos: Wikimedia CommonsPlace photos come from Wikimedia Commons, each under its own licence (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0 or public domain). They were resized and re-encoded. Each photo keeps its own licence, and photos under CC BY-SA stay under the same CC BY-SA licence (Creative Commons licences, CC0, Commons reuse guide). The photographers do not endorse this site. Every photo is credited in the photo credits table below, and the Guess the Spot game shows a photo’s credit with the result. A photo may not show how the place looks today.
- Street photo links: MapillaryStreet photo links open Mapillary's own site. No Mapillary imagery is stored or shown on this site. What you see after following a link is Mapillary’s service (mapillary.com), under its own terms.
- Labels, fonts and the county outlineMap labels come from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors). The label font is Noto Sans (Noto Sans, SIL Open Font License), served from this site and not from a font service. The county outline is the U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2026 boundary (TIGER/Line files, public domain).
Place photo credits
The photos on place pages and in the Guess the Spot photo rounds are from Wikimedia Commons. In this build: CC BY-SA 4.0 (16), CC BY 4.0 (13), CC BY 2.0 (5), CC BY-SA 3.0 (4), CC BY-SA 2.0 (3), CC BY 3.0 (2), CC0 (2), Public domain (2), CC BY 2.5 (1).
| Place | Photo by | Licence | Photo date | Original |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn Park Silver Spring | Davest3r08 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2023-09-16 | Commons page |
| Activity Center at Bohrer Park Gaithersburg | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021 | Commons page |
| Beall-Dawson House Rockville | Dbenford | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2020 | Commons page |
| Black Hill Regional Park Germantown | TheTurducken | CC BY 2.0 | 2022-02-20 | Commons page |
| Brookeville Olney | Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0 | 2012 | Commons page |
| Button Farm Living History Center Germantown | Preservation Maryland | CC BY-SA 2.0 | 2012-08-28 | Commons page |
| C&O Canal Towpath Potomac | Acroterion | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2020-10-18 | Commons page |
| Cabin John Regional Park Rockville | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021 | Commons page |
| Capital Crescent Trail Bethesda | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021 | Commons page |
| Caroline Freeland Park Bethesda | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021 | Commons page |
| Clara Barton National Historic Site Bethesda | dbking | CC BY 2.0 | 2010-09-04 | Commons page |
| Connie Morella Library Bethesda | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021-05-06 | Commons page |
| Dowden's Ordinary Clarksburg | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2021-04-23 | Commons page |
| Gaithersburg Community Museum Gaithersburg | TwoScarsUp | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2020-06-17 | Commons page |
| Gaithersburg Library Gaithersburg | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021-08-21 | Commons page |
| Gaithersburg MARC Station Gaithersburg | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2026 | Commons page |
| Germantown Library Germantown | Carol M. Highsmith | Public domain | 2011 | Commons page |
| Germantown MARC Station Germantown | Mitchazenia | CC BY-SA 3.0 | 2012 | Commons page |
| Great Falls Tavern Potomac | Zeete | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2022-09-03 | Commons page |
| International Latitude Observatory Gaithersburg | BobDrzyzgula | Public domain | 2007 | Commons page |
| Jesup Blair Park Silver Spring | Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2021 | Commons page |
| Josiah Henson Historic Site Bethesda | Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0 | 2012 | Commons page |
| Little Bennett Regional Park Clarksburg | John Brighenti from Rockville, MD, United States | CC BY 2.0 | 2018-06-09 | Commons page |
| Long Branch Community Recreation Center Silver Spring | Bohemian Baltimore | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2019-03-28 | Commons page |
| Long Branch Library Silver Spring | Bohemian Baltimore | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2019-03-28 | Commons page |
| Matthew Henson Trail Wheaton | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2024-05-25 | Commons page |
| McCrillis Gardens Bethesda | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2023-04-18 | Commons page |
| National Capital Trolley Museum Wheaton | Educator Intel | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2018 | Commons page |
| North Branch Trail Olney | David Cranor | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2020-03-29 | Commons page |
| Oakley Cabin African American Museum Olney | Aude | CC BY 2.5 | 2000-01 | Commons page |
| Olney Library Olney | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021-09-20 | Commons page |
| Opal A. Daniels Park Takoma Park | Gnupratchett | CC0 | 2022-11-07 | Commons page |
| Potomac Library Potomac | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021-04-12 | Commons page |
| Rock Creek Regional Park Rockville | John Brighenti | CC BY 2.0 | 2024 | Commons page |
| Rock Creek Trail Rockville | Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2021-05-09 | Commons page |
| Rockville Memorial Library Rockville | Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2018-06-02 | Commons page |
| Seneca Greenway Trail Germantown | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 3.0 | 2020 | Commons page |
| Silver Spring B&O Railroad Station Silver Spring | Preservation Maryland | CC BY-SA 2.0 | 2015-08-31 | Commons page |
| Silver Spring Library Silver Spring | Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2018 | Commons page |
| Silver Spring Metro Station Silver Spring | Davest3r08 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2023-10-05 | Commons page |
| Sligo Creek Trail Takoma Park | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 3.0 | 2020 | Commons page |
| Takoma Park Community Center Takoma Park | Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0 | 2014 | Commons page |
| Takoma Urban Park Takoma Park | Gnupratchett | CC0 | 2022-11-04 | Commons page |
| Washington Square Park Gaithersburg | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2021 | Commons page |
| Waters House History Center Germantown | Preservation Maryland | CC BY-SA 2.0 | 2012-08-28 | Commons page |
| Wheaton Community Recreation Center Wheaton | Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2020 | Commons page |
| Wheaton Library Wheaton | G. Edward Johnson | CC BY 4.0 | 2024-08-21 | Commons page |
| Wheaton Regional Park Wheaton | John Brighenti from Rockville, MD, United States | CC BY 2.0 | 2019 | Commons page |
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Is a credit wrong, or is one of these your photo and you want it changed or removed? Use the corrections and removal form.
Data sources in this build
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Rules this site follows
Model, capture and visual effect are different things
- Model. The 3D map is a labeled model: right place, right shape and roughly the right height, built from public data. It is not photo-real and it is not current street-level detail. Paint, signs, parked cars and construction that exists today are not in it. Trees and building walls are generated stand-ins, as described under “What is real and what is generated” above.
- Capture. A captured scene is a phone scan or panorama of a real spot, shown with the date it was captured, always. It shows that spot as it was on that date and nothing later.
- Visual effect. Day or night, season, sky and fog are visual effects, not live conditions. They do not reflect today’s weather, time or season in the county.
“Permit on file as of”
The construction layer shows permit records the County had published on the date shown (“permit on file as of <date>”). A permit on file is a record, not a picture of a site: it does not mean work has started, is finished, or looks like anything in particular today. Records can be late, wrong or removed by the County.
No street-view imagery
MoCo 3D stores and shows no street-view imagery from Google, Mapillary or other street-view or map vendors. Street photo links open Mapillary's own site. No Mapillary imagery is stored or shown on this site. Visual content is generated from the open data listed above, is public aerial imagery or an openly licensed photo credited on this page, or is captured by us as described next.
How scenes are captured
- From public sidewalks and public plazas only, unless there is written permission from the owner.
- In daylight, with no people as the subject. No homes and no interiors without a signed OK.
- Faces and licence plates are blurred before anything is published, and location data in photo files is removed.
- Every scene shows its capture date.
If you think a capture breaks these rules, use the removal request form and say which scene.
Privacy
- No ads. The site shows no advertising and has no ad scripts.
- No analytics or tracking scripts. We do not add any. No account is needed.
- On your device. The site keeps a few things in your browser’s local storage, such as saved places, game progress and view preferences. They stay on your device; clear them in your browser settings whenever you like.
- Location. “Near me” asks for your location once, on a tap. It is used in your browser to sort results and is never stored or sent to us.
- What you send us. Only what you type into the partner form, the claim form or the corrections form. These are saved so a person can read and answer them, and used for nothing else.
- Hosting logs. Like any website, the host that serves these files processes standard request logs (such as IP address and time) to deliver the site and keep it secure.
Corrections and removal
Something wrong, out of date, or something you want taken down, such as a place listing, a scene, or a mention of your business? Tell us on the corrections and removal form. Say what is wrong and give the page address. The County may also require that any use of its data stops (its terms, section 6.2), and we will comply.