College Park: A History of the College and the Airfield

College Park is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, along U.S. Route 1 just northeast of Washington, D.C. Two institutions define its history: the University of Maryland, whose flagship campus grew from a 19th-century agricultural college, and College Park Airport, the world's oldest continuously operating airport, where the U.S. Army's first military pilots learned to fly. This page is the short version; the timeline gives the dated outline, and the resources page lists the archives behind it.

The college that named the city

The city's story begins with a school. In 1856, driven by the planter Charles Benedict Calvert of the nearby Riversdale estate, the Maryland Agricultural College was chartered — among the first agricultural colleges in America — and Calvert donated the land for its campus.³ The institution was renamed the University of Maryland in 1920.⁴ The oldest building on campus, the Rossborough Inn, was begun around 1798 to serve travelers on the Washington & Baltimore Turnpike (today's Route 1); Calvert later donated the land it stood on to the college in 1858.⁵⁶

The city itself came later. In 1890 the developer John Oliver Johnson bought land near the college, subdivided it, and named the new development "College Park" after the school.² The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had run through the area since 1835, and the local stop was called "College Station"; nearby Branchville grew around its own rail stop, with a post office by 1867.⁷⁸ A streetcar line reached the area in 1900 and connected it to Washington until service ended in 1958.⁹¹⁰ College Park was incorporated as a city in 1945.¹

A field of aviation firsts

College Park's place in history was sealed by flight. In August 1909 the U.S. Army Signal Corps established an airfield here so Wilbur Wright could train Army officers in the government's first airplane.¹¹ Wright began instruction on October 8, 1909, teaching Lieutenants Frank Lahm and Frederic Humphreys; Humphreys then became the first Army officer to solo in a government airplane.¹²¹³ The field has operated ever since, and is described as the world's oldest continuously operated airport.¹⁴

A remarkable run of aviation milestones followed at College Park, though their exact wording matters:

• On October 27, 1909, Mrs. Ralph Van Deman became the first woman to fly as an airplane passenger in the United States (not the first in the world — women had flown in Europe in 1908).¹⁵
• In 1911 the Army opened the Signal Corps Aviation School here, generally regarded as the nation's first military aviation school.¹⁶
• On June 7, 1912, a machine gun was fired from an airplane at College Park for the first time.¹⁷
• On August 12, 1918, the first U.S. Post Office–operated airmail flight departed College Park for New York, making the field the Washington terminus of the Post Office's airmail service.¹⁸
• In the early 1920s, Emile and Henry Berliner carried out pioneering helicopter experiments at College Park; their surviving machine is displayed at the airport's museum.¹⁹ (Their work was foundational, but "the first controlled helicopter flight" is a contested claim in aviation history, so we describe it as pioneering rather than a world first.)

College Park Airport was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and the College Park Aviation Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate on the field, opened its current building in 1998.²⁰²¹

College Park today

College Park is now defined by the University of Maryland's flagship campus and the community around it, with more than 30,000 residents along the Route 1 corridor between Washington and the Capital Beltway.²²

Every specific date, name, and figure above is sourced to the references below and on the resources page. Found an error? Please tell us.