Walks of Silver Spring, MD

Back in July, I took a trip to the Washington, DC area to visit my friend Jenny and see historic sites. I spent a day in Silver Spring, MD, where I visited the National Park Seminary and local religious buildings. During that day, I also hiked the extensive trails connecting Silver Spring to neighboring Chevy Chase. As an aside, this town is named for medieval English folk hero Chevy Chase, who was immortalized in a once-popular ballad. While I did not see any minstrels on my trip, I did cross pedestrian bridges, view historic buildings, and enjoy nature.

Since I had parked in the National Museum of Health and Medicine parking lot (to be reviewed on Friday), I started my walk at the Forest Glen Annex and connected to Ireland Drive Trail. At a mile and a half in total length, this mostly paved walking and biking path winds through the woodlands maintained by the U.S. Army. The forest is 136 acres in size (0.55 sq km), while the entire Fort Detrick is nearly 1,300 acres (5.26 sq km) in size. The fort continues to specialize in Medical Command, as it has since its founding during World War II.

At the end of Ireland Drive Trail, I connected to one of the Rock Creek Trails, which runs between Montgomery County, MD to Washington, DC. While the entire trail system is twenty-two miles in length, I only walked about a mile of it. The trail gets its name for Rock Creek, which parallels the trail. Several pedestrian bridges and boardwalks allow visitors to travel over wetlands and across the small river. Plans for the trail were begun in 1965 during the “Trails for America” study led by Stuart Udall of the Johnson Administration. The study concluded that playing outside was good for people of all ages, and the federal government provided funding for local trails to be built on abandoned canal paths, railroads, and underused roads. The nonprofit American Trails grew out of this study and continues to help the National Park Service and local communities build and maintain trails.

Near the trail was Woodend Sanctuary & Mansion, an estate turned nature area and social venue. Woodend was built in 1927 for the Wells family by John Russell Pope, a well-known American architect. His greatest building accomplishments included the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art, which he designed later in his career. As the architect for the rich, he altered mansions in Newport, RI and built his own home there. Known as “The Waves”, his house is located along the Cliff Walk at the end of the peninsula. Back in Chevy Chase, the Woodend property has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.

My final stop during my walk was attempting to see a train from a bridge across a pair of tracks. These tracks appear to include the MARC Brunswick line, a commuter rail which has a stop in Silver Spring, although these trains only run during weekdays. The tracks also support the commuter Purple Line through Maryland Transit Administration, the Metro Red Line through Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and Amtrak. Even with all this supposed train activity and hearing the trains pass while I was walking, I never did manage to run to the bridge on time to take a good train picture. However, this line is best known in train history for a collision between a MARC train and an Amtrak train in Silver Spring during 1996, resulting in derailment and multiple deaths. With that in mind, I am glad the trains passed me by without incident.