Qualla: Takoma Park, Maryland

Takoma Park, Maryland: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sixteen-year-olds vote in municipal elections in Takoma Park, Maryland - the first city in the United States to extend the franchise that far, by a 2013 city council ordinance that has stood for over a decade. The town is also a Tree City USA, a Nuclear Free Zone (declared in 1983, never rescinded), a designated sanctuary for refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala (also 1980s, also still on the books), and the location of a food co-op that occupies more square footage than the city hall. Newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s called the place the Berkeley of the East and the People's Republic of Takoma Park, partly in mockery and partly in admiration. The residents took the nicknames as compliments and put one of them on a coffee mug. The town, in short, is exactly what it appears to be on the bumper sticker.

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Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

Takoma Park, Maryland: Robert's Choice

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit takomabibelot, CC BY 2.0. In the spring of 1884, a thirty-three-year-old developer named Benjamin Franklin Gilbert bought 100 acres of land called Robert's Choice from G.C. Grammar for the purpose of building a planned Victorian commuter suburb. The B&O Railroad's Metropolitan Branch ran through it. Gilbe...

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Image: takomabibelot | CC BY 2.0

Takoma Park, Maryland: Adventists and Activists

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1904 the Seventh-day Adventist Church bought five acres of land along Carroll Avenue and decided to move its world headquarters from Battle Creek, Michigan, to Takoma Park. The Adventists needed clean water from natural springs (Spring Park provided it) and a quieter place tha...

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Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

Takoma Park, Maryland: The Ugly Covenants

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MegOBannon, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made the practice illegal, much of Takoma Park was developed under racially restrictive covenants. The first known covenant - in the Hillcrest subdivision - dates to 1911. The 1939 deed for the New Hampshire Avenue Highlands subdivision read: '...

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Image: MegOBannon | CC BY-SA 4.0

Takoma Park, Maryland: Unification

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. For over a century, Takoma Park sat awkwardly across two Maryland counties - Montgomery on the west, Prince George's on the east - and across the District of Columbia line at its southern edge, with the original downtown sitting partly in Maryland and partly in D.C. By the 1990s ...

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Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Takoma Park, Maryland: What It Is Now

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bruce Andersen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The 2020 census counted 17,629 residents on 2.09 square miles. Forty-seven percent are tenants. Twenty-five percent were born outside the United States. Median household income runs above the Montgomery County average but Sligo Creek's apartment cluster anchors a significant work...

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Image: Bruce Andersen | CC BY-SA 2.0