Downtown Silver Spring, Then and Now

Take a tour of the dynamic central business district of Silver Spring, Maryland, and its surroundings.

In 1840, journalist and politician Francis Preston Blair discovered a sparkling mica-flecked spring that would serve as the centerpiece of his country estate, Silver Spring. In just over a century, this bucolic woodland, located across the border from Washington, D.C., became known as downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. Author Jerry A. McCoy, founder and president of the Silver Spring Historical Society and a special collections librarian at the D.C. Public Library's Washingtoniana Division and Peabody Room, takes you inside of how it came to be.