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Chevy Chase, Maryland
Unincorporated community
The former 4-H Youth Conference Center, which is to be redeveloped into senior housing
The former 4-H Youth Conference Center, which is to be redeveloped into senior housing
A map showing the location of Chevy Chase, Maryland.
A map showing the location of Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Location in Maryland
A map showing the location of Chevy Chase, Maryland.
A map showing the location of Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Location in the United States
Country  United States
State  Maryland
County Montgomery

Chevy Chase is the name of both a town and an unincorporated census-designated place (Chevy Chase (CDP), Maryland) that straddle the northwest border of Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Several settlements in the same area of Montgomery County and one neighborhood of Washington include Chevy Chase in their names. These villages, the town, and the CDP share a common history and together form a larger community colloquially referred to as Chevy Chase.

Primarily a residential suburb, Chevy Chase adjoins Friendship Heights, a popular shopping district. It is the home of the Chevy Chase Club and Columbia Country Club, private clubs whose members include many prominent politicians and Washingtonians. It also includes the former National 4-H Youth Conference Center, which hosted the National 4-H Conference, an event for 4-Hers throughout the nation to attend, and the National Science Bowl annually in either late April or early May. The center was sold in 2021 for $40 million; it is to be replaced by a senior living development.

Chevy Chase was noted as "the most educated town in America" in a study conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of Education, with 93.5 percent of adult residents having at least a bachelor's degree.

The name Chevy Chase is not related to actor and comedian Chevy Chase, and is in fact derived from Cheivy Chace, the name of the land patented to Colonel Joseph Belt from Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore on July 10, 1725. It has historic associations with a 1388 chevauchée — a French word describing a border raid — fought by Lord Percy of England and Earl Douglas of Scotland over hunting grounds, or a "chace", in the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland and Otterburn. The battle was memorialized in "The Ballad of Chevy Chase".

History

Chevy Chase was unincorporated farmland in the years before 1890, during which time Senator Francis G. Newlands of Nevada and his partners began the aggressive acquisition of land in northwestern Washington, D.C., and southern Montgomery County, Maryland, for the purpose of developing a residential streetcar suburb for Washington, D.C. (See Washington streetcars) The Chevy Chase Land Company was founded in 1890, and its eventual holdings of more than 1,700 acres (6.9 km2) would extend along the present-day Connecticut Avenue from Florida Avenue north to Jones Bridge Road. The Chevy Chase Land Company would build houses for no less than $5,000 on Connecticut Avenue or less than $3,000 on a side street.

The name "Chevy Chase" was taken from one of the absorbed plots of land. Its name in turn, according to the Village of Chevy Chase's official history, can be traced to the larger tract of land called "Cheivy Chace" that was patented to Colonel Joseph Belt from Lord Baltimore on July 10, 1725. It has historic associations to a 1388 battle between Lord Percy of England and Earl Douglas of Scotland, the subject of the ballad entitled "The Ballad of Chevy Chase". At issue in this "chevauchée" (a French word describing a border raid) were hunting grounds or a "chace" in the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland and Otterburn.

Leon E. Dessez was Chevy Chase's first resident. He and Lindley Johnson of Philadelphia designed the first four houses in the area.

As with many suburban towns throughout the United States during the first half of the 20th century, Chevy Chase excluded individuals based on race and religion. Founder Francis G. Newlands was an "avowed racist" who in 1912 mounted his presidential campaign on a platform that called for a constitutional amendment to disenfranchise black men and limit immigration to whites only. Three years earlier, the Chevy Chase Land Company had brought suit against a developer who had begun to sell lots to black people in a planned subdivision called "Belmont" on the grounds that the developer had committed fraud by proposing "to sell lots...to negroes."

By the 1920s, exclusionary language had begun to appear in Chevy Chase real estate deeds. Some prohibited both the sale or rental of homes to "a Negro or one of the African race." Others prohibited sales or rentals to "any persons of the Semetic [sic] race." By World War II, such restrictive language had largely disappeared from real estate transactions, and all were voided by the 1948 Supreme Court decision in Shelley v. Kraemer.

Subdivisions

Villages

In addition to the above, the United States Postal Service uses Chevy Chase for postal addresses that lie in the Town of Somerset and the Village of Friendship Heights which lie outside historical Chevy Chase. USPS also employs Chevy Chase addresses for the part of Silver Spring east of Jones Mill Road and Beach Drive and, west of Grubb Road.

Education

Chevy Chase is served by the Montgomery County Public Schools. Private schools in Chevy Chase include Concord Hill School and Oneness-Family School. Residents of Chevy Chase are zoned to either Chevy Chase or North Chevy Chase elementary, Silver Creek Middle School, and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High-school.

Notable people

Current residents

Former residents

Joealon
Yosef Alon
  • Yosef Alon
  • Jamshid Amouzegar, former prime minister of Iran.
  • Tom Braden - journalist and author
  • David Brinkley - journalist
  • John Charles Daly - radio and television personality
  • Bill Guckeyson - athlete and military aviator
  • Ed Henry - White House correspondent for Fox News
  • Richard Helms - former director of the Central Intelligence Agency
  • Genevieve Hughes - one of the 13 original Freedom Riders
  • Hubert Humphrey - vice president of the United States under Lyndon Johnson
  • Gayle King - co-anchor of CBS This Morning and an editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine
  • Anthony McAuliffe - US general known for his defense of Bastogne during World War II
  • Sandra Day O'Connor - United States Supreme Court Justice; lived in Chevy Chase until 2005
  • Hilary Rhoda - model
  • Nancy Grace Roman - NASA's first female executive and, as Chief of Astronomy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the founder of its space astronomy program and "Mother of Hubble".
  • Peter Rosenberg - radio disc jockey, television host, and podcaster
  • Danny Rubin - American-Israeli basketball player for Bnei Herzliya of the Israeli Basketball Premier League
  • Karl Truesdell, U.S. Army major general
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