DC Region History

Although most of my history articles have been about public transportation, I have written a few pieces on non-transportation-related history of the DC region. In an October 2017 article, I introduced Greater Greater Washington readers to the PG Atlas website’s historical maps and areal photos of Prince George’s County: “This online GIS atlas reveals the history of Prince George’s County“

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History of the Neighborhoods Isolated by DC Route 295

In June 2021, a truck destroyed the Lane Place pedestrian bridge over the Kennilworth Avenue freeway, DC Route 295 in Northeast DC, which separates several neighborhoods along the Anacostia River from the rest of East-of-the-River DC. Shortly afterward, I wrote a pair of articles about these neighborhoods and their history.

• “How DC Route 295 isolates neighborhoods in Northeast DC from the rest of the city“
• “Here’s how neighborhoods west of Kenilworth Avenue in Northeast DC became isolated from the city“

Writing this pair of articles was very interesting, because I hadn’t known much about them at all, and was surprised to learn just how how different the histories of the neighborhoods were: one was established by a famous Black radio evangelist from the mid-20th Century, while another was originally segregated with restrictive covenants and the first Black families to move in were faced with Klan terrorism.

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Historical Place Names in the DC Region

I wrote a pair of Greater Greater Washington articles in July and September 2018 on the colonial-era “hundreds” and post-independence “election districts” into which Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties were historically divided:

• “How Prince George’s County was divided and named in colonial times and after independence“
• “How different parts of Montgomery County used to be divided and named“

I hope to eventually extend this series to cover place names in Northern Virginia, but the main priority for that project would be to map historical county subdivisions used by the Census to tabulate data so that I can extend my historic demographic maps of the county back to the 19th Century.

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History of College Park, MD

More recently, I wrote a pair of articles for College Park Here & Now in February and April 2021 about the history of the incorporation of College Park, Maryland—”The history of College Park’s incorporation“—and its annexations of land post-incorporation—”The history of College Park’s annexations.”

This history turned out to be more complex than I had expected, as it involved a series of attempts in the 1930’s to consolidate all of the municipalities in the US-1 corridor in Prince George’s County, along with a large amount of unincorporated land as far west as the Montgomery County border, into a municipality called “Maryland City.”

Had Maryland City been established, it would be one of the state’s largest municipalities today, with over 200,000 residents. I hope to eventually write an article on this failed proposal, as well as one on the 1954 municipal home rule law that effectively ended the incorporation of new municipalities in Maryland.

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Articles Based on the DC Underground Atlas

Finally, in July and August 2018, I wrote a pair of Greater Greater Washington articles on the history of transportation and water tunnels detailed in Elliot Carter‘s DC Underground Atlas:

• “What lies beneath DC? A lot more tunnels than you might think!“
• “The fascinating story of DC’s aqueducts and reservoirs“

Writing these articles was an interesting experience, and different from my usual history writing, since they were largely summaries of Elliot Carter’s results, rather than the product of my own research. However, they were very popular with Greater Greater Washington readers, and helped create more awareness of the underground infrastructure of the District of Columbia.

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