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Few Rockville people
today have heard of Spring Lake Park, but recent rediscovery and
preservation of the Higgins Cemetery near Twinbrook Parkway have
created an incentive to rediscover this vanished neighborhood.
Spring Lake Park was
created in 1890 when Washington Danenhower surveyed 76 acres,
formerly part of the Higgins farm, for a new subdivision near
Rockville. The plat noted approximately 465 building lots, an old
farmhouse, three springs, and the Higgins family cemetery.
Danenhower hoped that this area would appeal to commuters travelling
the new B&O railroad line to jobs in Washington, D.C.
While Spring Lake Park
did not develop into the Victorian neighborhood Danenhower
envisioned, by the 1920s many modest cottages and bungalows had been
constructed. Surviving the Great Depression, fathers in Spring
Lake Park worked as plumbers, carpenters, electricians, landscapers,
postal workers, or government workers. Mothers stayed at home.
Residents shopped at a little general store at Halpine and attended
church nearby.The children trudged a mile down the tracks to attend
Montrose School on Randolph Road. In summer, they played baseball
on a vacant lot and hiked through the woods to swim in Rock Creek.
They romped in the old cemetery and caught tadpoles and minnows in
the springs. Kids rode their bikes through the Wilkins estate, now
Parklawn Cemetery, where many former Spring Lake Park residents are
buried. In winter, parents built a barricade and a fire, while bold
sledders sped down Wicomico Avenue right to the spring at the
bottom! Another activity was crowding around a neighbor’s 5" TV set
to watch a favorite show.
Until wells were dug and
public water arrived in the 1960s, the 50 families of Spring Lake
Park carried water for drinking and cooking in buckets from the
farmhouse spring. Some local streets were only foot paths. After
the winter mud season the County sent loads of cinders or gravel to
fill the ruts. Paved streets did not come until the late 1940s.
Several young men from
Spring Lake Park enlisted during World War II. Later the GI Bill of
Rights made affordable housing possible for returning soldiers, and
new subdivisions sprung up. Fiercely independent Spring Lake Park
residents declined to join the new civic association in nearby
Twinbrook.
In the mid-1960s,
Twinbrook Parkway sliced through Spring Lake Park from the Rockville
Pike to Veirs Mill Road, replacing the railroad crossing and forcing
some residents to lose their homes. In 1970 the huge U.S. Dept. of
Health, Education and Welfare building appeared on Parklawn Drive.
Commercial and light industrial uses took over Spring Lake Park,
encouraging other residents to sell. The few remaining houses were
altered for non-residential use. After Twinbrook Metro Station
opened in 1984, road patterns changed, and the little subdivision of
Spring Lake Park all but disappeared.
Within Spring Lake Park
lies the old Higgins cemetery, last used for burials in the 1890s.
The property was abandoned and nearly hidden under decades of
debris. A century later Peerless Rockville, the DAR, Higgins family
members, and others moved to preserve it, and in 1999 the new
Higgins Cemetery Association took title to the property. It is
hoped that visitors to the tiny plot will also envision this place
called Spring Lake Park that survived good and bad times, sent sons
off to war, and reared its children in a warm, friendly
environment. |
