Silver Spring, Maryland
community in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States
Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, it is an edge city. As of 2026, the population is around 84,593, making it the 6th most populated city in Maryland.
Downtown Silver Spring, located next to the northern tip of Washington, D.C., is the oldest and most urbanized area of Silver Spring, surrounded by several inner suburban residential neighborhoods inside the Capital Beltway. Many mixed-use developments combining retail, residential, and office space have been built since 2004.
Silver Spring takes its name from a mica-flecked spring discovered there in 1840 by Francis Preston Blair, who subsequently bought much of the area's surrounding land. Acorn Park, south of downtown, is believed to be the site of the original spring.
Geography
As an unincorporated census-designated place, Silver Spring's boundaries are not consistently defined. As of the 2010 census, the U.S. Census Bureau gives Silver Spring a total area of 7.92 square miles (20.5 km2), which is all land; however, the CDP contains some creeks and small ponds. This definition is a 15% reduction from the 9.4 square miles (24 km2) used in previous years.
Silver Spring contains the following neighborhoods: Downtown Silver Spring, East Silver Spring, Woodside, Woodside Park, Lyttonsville, North Hills Sligo Park, Long Branch, Indian Spring, Goodacre Knolls, Franklin Knolls, Montgomery Knolls, Clifton Park Village, New Hampshire Estates, Oakview, and Woodmoor.
“Silver Spring, Maryland” enters the record as community in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Silver, Spring and Maryland can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Silver Spring, Maryland” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Silver, Spring and Maryland provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q755741. VIAF identifies the subject as 145409393. The Library of Congress control number is n80001253. Authority coordinates are 39.002, -77.021. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2004, 1840 and 2010.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Silver Spring, Maryland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.