Study Area VI was once part of a frontier area of the initial settlement of the Province of Maryland, a settlement that began at the mouths of the Potomac and Patuxent Rivers and moved slowly upstream along the riverfronts. Although few boundaries existed before the establishment of Prince George's County in 1695 and the District of Columbia in 1791, the Study Area's 8,000 acres touched the Potomac River at only one point - Oxon Cove, the mouth of Oxon Run. It was here that the largest tract of land was patented in 1622, involving over 600 acres and named St. Elizabeth (or St. Elizabeth's). Several other tracts straddled what is now the borderline between the County and the District of Columbia, but most of the Study Area land lies well to the east of the Potomac River and is characterized by elevated areas or heights as it recedes from the Potomac River bed. Several tributaries which flow southwestward to Oxon Cove and the Potomac have valleys which further add to the hilly character of the terrain, giving rise to elevations that reach 300 feet in some sections.
The St. Elizabeth's tract passed to Colonel John Addison in 1695 and became a part of his extensive landholdings along the Potomac. The name of the manor there was later changed to Oxon Hill by one of his descendants. Other members of the family lived at Barnaby Manor, on Barnaby Run (near the intersection of Owens and Wheeler Roads). The southeast section of the Study Area drains toward Henson Creek; here were located several other very old land patents dating back to 1688; these tracts would lie along the route of the present Capital Beltway.
After the establishment of Prince George's County in 1695, the Study Area was included in the very large district known as the Piscataway Hundred, embracing the southwestern section of the County along the Potomac River, from Oxon Run to Mattawoman Creek. Later, it may have been part of the Hynson (or Henson) Hundred, partitioned off from the Piscataway Hundred in 1772. After modern election districts were established in 1799, Study Area VI became part of the Spauldings Election District (1816) and the Oxon Hill Election District (1874).
Population counts before the Civil War indicate the presence of relatively few people in the Spauldings Election District -- around 1,500 or seven percent of the County's 20,216 residents in 1820.
Of the six election districts in existence at that time, the Spauldings District had the lowest proportion of slaves -- 41 percent, or five percent of all the slaves in the County. It also had a relatively high proportion of "free blacks" -- amounting to 11 percent of the total residents in the Spauldings District (148 out of 1,468).
The composition of the population did not change appreciably in the Spauldings District until after the Civil War when the proportion of black residents declined to 27 percent of total population. The rural character of the District and Study Area VI and its geographic isolation from small but growing places of population in the County in the late 1800's combined to favor the low popu- lation count for many decades. The Study Area lacked towns and was primarily a farming area.
ESTIMATED POPULATION GROWTH STUDY AREA VI year number 1820 700 1880 800 1900 1,000 1930 2,000 1940 3,000 1950 7,300 1960 23,000 1970 59,795
The one discernible village in the entire Study Area in the late 1800's was Silver Hill, located along the old road leading out of the District of Columbia that was a main stagecoach route to points southeastward. Later on, this road had various names such as Naylor Road, Walker Road, Silver Hill Road, and Branch Avenue, but in the 19th Century it carried travelers from places like Brandywine, Surrattsville (now Clinton), and farms along St. Barnabas Road toward the Navy Yard Bridge crossing of the Anacostia River and into the more settled portions of the nation's capital. Near Silver Hill, the road branched eastward to Suitland and then southwestward to Oxon Hill.
The road also served as a route for the carrying of farm produce into the market centers of the District of Columbia, and its importance in this respect was tied to the growing demand in the 1800's for roads and bridges to accommodate the shift from waterborne to overland commerce. At first, turnpike and ferry companies were formed to pioneer in the development of new transportation routes, and then bridge-building companies were formed to bypass the old ferries which charged high tolls and necessitated the unloading and reloading of goods at the crossings. Study Area VI had one of these main ferry crossing routes along its southern perimeter which terminated near Oxon Cove at Fox's Ferry, on the eastern side of the Potomac River from Alexandria, Virginia. Fox's Ferry was named for George Fox who established the ferry service there before the Civil War. Old records indicate that smuggling activities during that war were carried on at the ferry location and that during prohibition days the ferry was reactivated for the last time. Increased pollution and siltation, accelerated by the use of the Oxon Cove area as a dumping ground for refuse, completely destroyed the cove as a wildlife sanctuary in the early 1930's.
The old Navy Yard-Anacostia Bridge across the Anacostia River in the District of Columbia, used by farmers in Study Area VI and surrounding sections, consisted of an old wooden pile and trestle type, common in an era of plentiful lumber and rare coin. Cattle were usually driven across these old bridges. In 1875, a new iron deck truss span replaced the wooden structure, and in 1904 Congressional appropriations became available for the building of a steel girder bridge.
Since the two main paths of travel in the Study Area (Livingston Road and what is now Branch Avenue) made connections with the Anacostia Bridge crossing, improvements to the bridge had a bearing on early subdivision development in the Study Area -- the bridge acted as an agent in knitting together this outlying section with the federal employment and mercantile centers of the City of Washington. In the same fashion, later improvements stimulated land development in the Study Area. These included the opening in the 1940's of Indian Head Highway (an alternate route to Old Livingston Road) and Suitland Parkway (a new federal roadway link between the city and Andrews Air Force Base), the establishment in the late 1940's of the first network of sewer lines in a portion of the Study Area, the opening of the new South Capitol Street Bridge across the Potomac River in 1950, and the construction of new Branch Avenue (Rt. 5) in the latter part of the 1950's.
While a few parcels of land in various locations were subdivided into building lots before 1940, most of the upswing in residential construction was keyed to the years of the 1940's. During that decade, substantial production of homes took place in the western, central, and eastern sections of the Study Area, all in locales that were favored by close proximity and access to the District of Columbia. Among the major developments which were initiated during that decade were several along Indian Head Highway, including Forest Heights (which incorporated as a municipality in 1949) and Glassmanor (developed with garden apartments and attached homes). Along the old route of Branch Avenue, the Hillcrest and Marlow Heights sections provided large additions to the stock of housing, and in the extreme eastern section, at the juncture of Suitland Road and Suitland Parkway, the Morningside subdivisions were introduced and culminated in the municipality of Morningside in 1949. It is estimated that by the end of the 1940's the Study Area had a population count of over 7,000.
A decade later (1959) the estimated count of residents was almost 23,000 and reflected the addition of around 4,500 new dwelling units. These units were of various types, ranging from conventional single-family subdivisions to sections of duplex and triplex housing and to the higher density of garden apartments. In general, much of this residential construction took place around or near the cores of the previous decade, resulting in a very large expansion of development in Hillcrest and Marlow Heights, in new subdivisions near the Town of Morningside, and in the development of subdivisions to the east of Forest Heights and Glassmanor. According to a survey made in 1959, there were almost 11,000 persons living in the central Hillcrest-Marlow Heights vicinity, almost 8,000 in the western section (including Forest Heights and Glassmanor), and over 2,000 in the eastern section around Morningside.
Most residential construction during the 1960's has taken the form of apartment building of both garden and elevator types, and the locale for these has tended to cluster in two sections -- Hillcrest-Marlow Heights and around Glassmanor. A number of multi-family structures are also found along Southern Avenue (marking the boundary with the District of Columbia), along formerly rural Wheeler Road, bordering Silver Hill Road (toward Suitland), and in the eastern section near the Capital Beltway which opened in 1964. The 1970 population count indicated that the number of residents in the Study Area was almost 60,000.
Accompanying the growth of population, and particularly the acceleration of apartment complexes in the 1960's, has been the emergence of commercial centers which provide retail trade and services. These include two regional centers (Iverson Mall and Marlow Heights), one on a community scale (Eastover), and several that have neighborhood trading areas. These are supplemented by strip commercial land uses along highways. A number of office buildings have been constructed in commercial centers, and land near the Capital Beltway is now showing a trend toward mixed commercial and industrial use.