Aspen Hill
From District 4 -- Montgomery County, Maryland
Contents |
Aspen Hill, Maryland
Perhaps you will want to see the Wikipedia entry for Aspen Hill, Maryland. You may wish to see the Aspen Hill Network Wiki.
This entry was developed and is maintained, thus far, by Thomas Hardman.
Thardman 19:43, 3 June 2008 (EDT)
History
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.
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 county 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.
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, with much of Aspen Hill's modern shape having been set by the mid-1960s. A local high school of the Montgomery County Public Schools opened as Robert E Peary HS in 1963, which now operates 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. 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 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 possibly 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.
Source Credits
Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC) Historical Marker Database (hmdb.org) Manor Country Club Anecdotal recollections of Thomas Hardman
