Qualla: College Park, Maryland

College Park, Maryland: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blacktupelo, CC BY-SA 4.0. In October 1909, Wilbur Wright stood at the edge of a freshly mowed field in Prince George's County, Maryland, and taught U.S. Army Signal Corps officers to fly. The aircraft was a Wright Model A, the U.S. government's first airplane. The field is still there. It has new hangars, paved runways, and a small museum affiliated with the Smithsonian, but College Park Airport has been in continuous operation since Wright opened it - the longest of any airport in the world. About a mile southwest, on the other side of Route 1, the University of Maryland sprawls across more than forty percent of the city's land area. Between them sits the rest of College Park: a city of about 35,000 people, a college town in obvious ways and in less obvious ones, still working out what to be when the students leave for the summer.

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Image: Blacktupelo | CC BY-SA 4.0

College Park, Maryland: The Oldest Airport

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blacktupelo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Signal Corps picked the College Park field in 1909 because it was close enough to Washington for officers to commute and flat enough to land on. Wilbur Wright instructed three officers there in the autumn of that year - Lieutenants Frank Lahm, Frederic Humphreys, and Benjamin...

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Image: Blacktupelo | CC BY-SA 4.0

College Park, Maryland: Lakeland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dclemens1971, CC BY 4.0. Beginning in 1890, the railroad town of Lakeland grew up west of the B&O tracks on land too flood-prone for the white residents of College Park. Lakeland became one of a chain of African American communities along Route 1 through Prince George's County. By 1903 it had a school an...

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College Park, Maryland: A College Town That Wasn't Quite One

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blacktupelo, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the early 2000s, College Park was a college town with a strange problem: not enough of a town. Students complained about the lack of decent restaurants and walkable streets. Faculty bought houses in nearby D.C. suburbs because there wasn't enough housing close to campus that t...

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College Park, Maryland: The Federal Neighbors

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blacktupelo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Outside the campus, College Park is unusually thick with federal agencies. The National Archives at College Park - Archives II to the people who work there - is the largest archival facility in the federal government, holding most of the records the older Archives I downtown can'...

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Image: Blacktupelo | CC BY-SA 4.0

College Park, Maryland: A City Around a Tornado

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blacktupelo, CC BY-SA 4.0. On September 24, 2001, less than two weeks after the September 11 attacks, a multiple-vortex F3 tornado tore through College Park. It killed two people, injured 55, and caused $101 million in damage. The 2001 outbreak that produced the College Park tornado was the most dramatic r...

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Image: Blacktupelo | CC BY-SA 4.0