Aspen Hill, Maryland
From Aspen Hill, Maryland, USA
Aspen Hill, Maryland, is an unincorporated place in Montgomery County, Maryland.
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Geography
The US Census locates Aspen Hill at 39°5′19″N, 77°4′49″W (39.088525, -77.080267). The Aspen Hill Civic Association, Inc., defines the boundaries of its membership area as a subset of "greater Aspen Hill". Loosely speaking, Aspen Hill may be said to be everything north of Veirs Mill Road, east of Rock Creek, south of Manor County Club and Leisure World, and west of the Turkey Branch of Rock Creek which runs through the Matthew Henson State Park and crosses under Georgia Avenue at the intersection with Hewitt Avenue. It also includes everything along Hewitt Avenue north of the "greenspace" which runs from Georgia Avenue just south of Hewitt Avenue to past Layhill Road just south of North Gate Drive, and then along Layhill Road north to just beyond Bel Pre Road.
Aspen Hill's boundaries are, in some places, diffuse and problematic. Arguably the northeasternmost bound could be thought of as the intersection of MD-28 (Norbeck Road) and Layhill Road, though it may be more useful to think of the northeastern boundary as being Bel Pre Creek, beyond which lies Layhill.
History
Colonial to Antebellum
In 1718, 1298 acres of Colonial Maryland land were granted with the place name of "Lahill", with later subdivision into farms of several hundred acres each.
One such farm was the 700-acre estate of one James Rannie, originally from Scotland. This farm was established in the mid-1830s at the site of the present-day intersection of Georgia Avenue, Chesterwood Drive, and Heathfield Road.
At the time, Georgia Avenue was known as the Washington-Brookeville Turnpike, one of the few roads in the area and the only major highway. It was used as a military route during the Civil War, by both Union troops under General Ambrose Burnside (July 1862), and Confederate forces under General Jubal Early (July 1864). Long before that, it had been a trading route for the natives. Indeed, near the present-day intersection of Georgia Avenue and the Intercounty Connector (ICC) was a place where the natives (mostly Piscataway) gathered to make tools and weapons from the abundant quartz.
In 1834, a house was built which still stands at 4510 Woodlark Place in Aspen Hill. Although later enlarged to more than double the size, and having passed through the hands of several owners, this house has a legend attached to it as having been a way station on the Underground Railroad.
Veirs Mill was built by Samuel Clark Veirs in 1838. It was operated by Veirs and Co., or Veirs and Bros., for 89 years. Known by many as Rock Creek Mills, it drew customers from Rockville and Mitchel's Crossroads (now Wheaton), through a route that became known as Veirs Mill Road. The water-powered grist and saw mill was powered by a 12-foot drop of water directed along a mill race from Rock Creek. The first story of the building was stone, and the second two stories wood. The mill was located on the west side of Veirs Mill Road and south of Rock Creek. The millers house was on the northwest corner of Veirs Mill Road and Aspen Hill Road. Samuel Veirs lived nearby at Meadow Hall. Samuel Veirs was a prominent Rockville citizen, serving as a judge in the Orphans Court from 1864 until his death in 1872 (Historical Marker Database).
Aspen Hill got its first post office operated by postmaster Alexander Leadingham, at a general store located near the present-day intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Georgia Avenue. At that time, the community was called "Enster". The place name of "Aspen Hill" is said to have derived from a grove of trees at the post office. In this general area between the present-day Connecticut Avenue and Heathfield Road, there were two general stores and a blacksmith shop.
We have images of some maps of Aspen Hill in the Civil War period.
Turn of the Century
A bit north of Aspen Hill, in 1849 one Charles Abert established a sizeable estate called "Homewood", which sold to the Foreston Manor Club (Washington DC corporation) in September 1921. In August 1922, the Sixteenth Street Highlands of Maryland (Delaware corporation) was established to separate the Country Club entity from the property development aspect. Most of this can be credited to E. Brooke Lee and T. Howard Duckett. They restyled it as Manor Country Club, and in 1926 sold some of the land around the golf course for houses.
In the general time frame of the late 1880s to early 1920s, large tracts of land dominated the community, which at that time was known as "Aspen". One Edward Rabbitt owned some 350 acres at the site of the present-day Gate of Heaven Cemetery, as well as a 103-acre farm situated roughly at the present-day intersection of Georgia Avenue and Hewitt Avenue. One James P. Gill owned some 150 acres around and including the site of the present-day Home Depot. A one-room schoolhouse was located at the present site of Northgate Plaza Shopping Center. In roughly 1914-1915, Georgia Avenue was first paved in this area. President Woodrow Wilson supposedly visited to buy strawberries in season. The Birney (alternatively, Burney) family had a home at the site of the present-day Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery and bred dogs, Boston Terriers or Schnauzers, depending on source (Gooding, Helen Rabbitt, Rockville Gazette, 1988).
After the Second World War
The Fifties and Sixties Building Boom
After the Second World War, more development occurred in the area, with the core of modern Aspen Hill being built up along Aspen Hill Road in the early part of the 1950s, and in the second half of the 1950s, even more development occurred.
In early 1955, "north Aspen Hill" was barely developed. The Harmony Hills subdivision is laid out on the April 1955 MNCPPC map as "roads dedicated, not constructed". Aspen Hill south of Aspen Hill Road and west of Parkland Drive is seen in approximately its modern form on this map. Hewitt Avenue had some housing on it along its length, though much later that would be converted into apartment units, in the so-called Hermitage Park neighborhood. North of Aspen Hill, the Brookhaven and Aspen Knolls neighborhoods were laid out but little construction had occurred other than the stubs of Landgreen Street that are blocked by the lot of the Aspen Hill Library and Marianna Drive to the south of Landgreen. Also completed was Parkland Drive south of Heathfield Road; most of the houses show on State tax records as being built in 1954. Interestingly, at that time, Heathfield Road to the east of Parkland, and Bauer Drive to the west of Marianna Street were mere stubs, both bearing the name of Niagara Road. There was nothing much to the east of Parkland Drive nor to the west of Marianna Street, nor to the north of a stub of Oakvale Street. A new wave of homebuilding in that neighborhood occurred around 1959 according to State tax records.
By 1962 most of the English Manor subdivision to the north of Oakvale had been paved and significant construction had been completed. Brookhaven Elementary and Parkland Junior High schools have built, yet west of Chadwick Lane, Bauer Drive remains a mere stub and there is little sign of the Sycamore Creek development. Arctic Avenue does not exist north of a stub above Oriental Street, and Bel Pre Road ends just west of Merton Street. English Manor Elementary school is a mere proposal. To the east of Georgia Avenue, through to Layhill Road, there is little even by 1966 other than the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, and second or third-growth forests and farmlands.
Much of Aspen Hill's modern shape had been set by the mid-1960s. A local high school of the Montgomery County Public Schools opened as Robert E Peary HS in 1963 and closed in 1984 due to declining student enrollment, and which now operates after significant renovation as the Melvin J Berman Hebrew Academy.
Vitro Labs opened in 1957, occupying the site of the present day Home Depot store at 14000 Georgia Avenue, for some time was the largest civilian employer in Montgomery County. Throughout the early to mid-1960s, Georgia Avenue was widened from a two-lane road progressing northwards from Wheaton, to a point a bit north of the intersection with MD-28, which was known as Old Baltimore Road to the west of Georgia Avenue and as Norbeck Road to the east of Georgia Avenue. MD-28 was widened to a four-lane highway from Georgia Avenue westwards into Rockville in the late 1960s, concurrent with Rockville's disastrous Urban Renewal project which lasted from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. As Georgia Avenue's enlargement progressed into Aspen Hill, a segment of Connecticut Avenue was laid down between Georgia Avenue and Aspen Hill Road, forming the now-familiar triangle around the Northgate Plaza Shopping Center. A tunnel connected the main campus of Vitro to the annex beneath the present-day SuperFresh, which at the time was an outlet of the W.T. Grants department store chain.
In the later 1960s, Connecticut Avenue was opened to traffic as far north as the site of the present-day North Gate Park. A grade-separated crossing ramp system was built over the Turkey Branch of Rock Creek in preparation for an expected freeway that was never built. That right-of-way below the overpass has been reverted permanently from the State Highway Administration by an amendment to the State Constitution, which defines the streambed and adjoining lands as Matthew Henson State Park. Once this bridge was opened, traffic could flow through and from Aspen Hill all of the way into Northwest Washington DC.
Completion in the late 1960s and early 1970s of several roads, which had been awaiting approval of bridge designs, brought great change to the character of Aspen Hill. The completion of Bauer Drive from end-to-end made that one of the most heavily-traveled neighborhood roads, especially during winter when the designation as a Snow Emergency Route combined with heavy storms. The completion of Arctic Avenue from end-to-end had comparable effects of increased traffic flow. All of this was contemporaneous with the completion of MD-28, which allowed heavy traffic flows which were not previously possible due to the narrow two lane nature of Old Baltimore Road.
Shopping Centers proliferated and expanded during this time. By the mid-1970s, new shopping centers were in place at Rock Creek Village Shopping Center and Plaza del Mercado Shopping Center, and both Northgate Plaza Shopping Center and Aspen Hill Shopping Center expanded significantly, and a new and immense K-Mart became one of the largest department stores in Montgomery County.
Through the 1970s, apartment complexes proliferated throughout Aspen Hill, accompanied by massive loss of open fields and the remaining wooded areas which had not been acquired by the MNCPPC Parks.
End of the Millennium
Source Credits
Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC) Historical Marker Database (hmdb.org) Manor Country Club "Map of Norbeck-Colesville and Vicinity", MNCPPC, April 1955 "A Street Address Map of Lower Montgomery County", La Rue, Robert, Second Edition October 1962 Anecdotal recollections of Thomas Hardman Anecdotal recollections of Helen (Rabbitt) Gooding as transmitted by Leta Sheaffer to RootsWeb [MDMONTGO] Aspen Hill mailing list, including by reference the Rockville Gazette (1988, issue unknown)
External Links
- Historical Marker Database "hmdb.org" transcription of a marker installed by the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
- Manor Country Club website.
