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 , which is all land; however, the CDP contains some creeks and small ponds. This definition is a 15% reduction from the 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.
The U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Postal Service, Silver Spring Urban Planning District, and Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce, each use their own slightly different definitions. The Postal Service in particular assigns Silver Spring mailing addresses to a large swath of eastern Montgomery County sometimes called "Greater Silver Spring", including Four Corners, Woodmoor, Wheaton, Glenmont, Forest Glen, Forest Glen Park, Aspen Hill, Hillandale, White Oak, Colesville, Colesville Park, Cloverly, Calverton, Briggs Chaney, Greencastle, Northwood Park, Ashton, Sandy Spring, Sunset Terrace, Fairland, Lyttonsville, Kemp Mill, a portion of Langley Park, and a portion of Adelphi. The area that has a Silver Spring mailing address is larger in area than any city in Maryland except Baltimore.
Landmarks in the downtown area include the AFI Silver Theatre, the former headquarters of Discovery, Inc., a branch of The Fillmore, and the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Greater Silver Spring includes the National Museum of Health and Medicine, the headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the U.S.
Parks and recreation
Four major creeks run through Silver Spring: from west to east, they are Rock Creek, Sligo Creek, Long Branch, and Northwest Branch. Each is surrounded by parks offering hiking trails, playgrounds, picnic areas, and tennis courts. On weekends, roads are closed in the parks for bicycling and walking.
Northwest Branch Park also includes the Rachel Carson Greenway Trail, named after Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring and a former resident of the area. It continues north to Wheaton Regional Park, in Wheaton, which is home to the Brookside Gardens.
The Jessup Blair Park, south of downtown, has a soccer field, tennis courts, basketball courts, and a picnic area. There are similar local parks throughout the residential parts of the community.
Demographics
2023 estimates In 2023, the most populous racial/ethnic groups in Silver Spring were White / Caucasian (30,244 | 37.0%), Black / African American (24,320 | 29.7%), and Hispanic or Latino (19,307 | 23.6%).
In 2023, the most populous ancestries reported in Silver Spring were Central American (12,786 | 15.6%), Subsaharan African (10,750 | 13.1%), German (6,036 | 7.4%), Ethiopian (5,947 | 7.3%), and Irish (5,835 | 7.1%), together accounting for 50.5% of all Silver Spring residents.
2020 census As of the 2020 census, Silver Spring had a population of 81,015. The median age was 35.2 years. 21.9% of residents were under the age of 18 and 11.7% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 91.9 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 88.4 males age 18 and over. Females made up 50.9% of the population.
100.0% of residents lived in urban areas, while 0.0% lived in rural areas.
There were 33,378 households in Silver Spring, of which 29.0% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 36.9% were married-couple households, 21.4% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 34.2% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 34.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
There were 35,150 housing units, of which 5.0% were vacant. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0.6% and the rental vacancy rate was 5.4%.
+ Racial composition as of the 2020 census Race Number Percent White 28,355 35.0% Black or African American 23,223 28.7% American Indian and Alaska Native 965 1.2% Asian 6,092 7.5% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander 56 0.1% Some other race 13,189 16.3% Two or more races 9,135 11.3% Hispanic or Latino (of any race) 21,794 26.9%
Immigration As of 2019, 36.5% of Silver Spring residents (29,800 people) were born outside of the United States, which is higher than the national average of 13.9%. Of these, the most predominant foreign-born populations are from El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, and China.
2010 census Note: For the 2010 census, the boundaries of the Silver Spring CDP were changed, reducing the land area by approx. 15%. As a result, the population count for 2010 shows a 6.6% decrease, while the population density increased 11%.
As of the 2010 census, there were 71,452 residents, 28,603 total households, and 15,684 families residing in the Silver Spring CDP. The population density was . There were 30,522 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the community, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, for residents who self-identified as being members of "one race" was 45.7% White (7.8% German, 7.0% Irish, 5.7% English), 27.8% Black or African American (5.2% Ethiopian, 1.1% Haitian), 0.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 7.9% Asian (2.35% Indian, 1.74% Vietnamese, 1.32% Chinese, 0.63% Korean), 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and 13.2% "Some Other Race" (SOR). 4.8% of the CDP's residents self-identified as being members of two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race comprised 26.3% of the population (12.3% Salvadoran, 3.71% Guatemalan, 2.83% Mexican). Like much of the Washington metropolitan area, Silver Spring is home to many people of Ethiopian ancestry.
There were 28,603 households, out of which 27.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.6% were married couples living together, 11.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.2% were non-families. 33.6% of all households were made up of individuals living alone, and 16.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.49 and the average family size was 3.21.
In the census area, 21.4% of residents were under the age of 18, 9.4% from 18 to 24, 37.1% from 25 to 44, 23.8% from 45 to 64, and 8.4% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33.8 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.9 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.2 males.
The median income for a household in the census area was , and the median income for a family was .
History Before European settlement, present-day Silver Spring had been inhabited by various Indigenous peoples for about 10,000 years. Among them were the Piscataway, an Algonquian-speaking people who may have established a few villages along Sligo Creek and Rock Creek.
19th century In 1840, Francis Preston Blair, who later helped organize the modern Republican Party, along with his daughter, Elizabeth, discovered a spring flowing with chips of mica believed to be the now-dry spring visible at Acorn Park. Blair was looking for a site for his summer home to escape the summer heat of Washington, D.C.Sween, Jane C.; Offutt, William. Montgomery County: Centuries of Change. American Historical Press, 1999. . Two years later, Blair completed a 20-room mansion he dubbed "Silver Spring" on a country homestead. In 1854, Blair moved to the mansion permanently. The house stood until 1954.
By 1854, Blair's son, Montgomery Blair, who became Postmaster General under Abraham Lincoln and represented Dred Scott before the U.S. Supreme Court, built the Falkland house in the area.
By the end of the decade, Elizabeth Blair married Samuel Phillips Lee, third cousin of future Confederate leader Robert E. Lee, and gave birth to a boy, Francis Preston Blair Lee, who went on to become the first popularly elected Senator in U.S. history.
During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln visited the Silver Spring mansion several times, where he relaxed by playing town ball with Francis P. Blair's grandchildren.
In 1864, Confederate States Army General Jubal Early occupied Silver Spring before the Battle of Fort Stevens. After the engagement, fleeing Confederate soldiers razed Montgomery Blair's Falkland residence.
At the time, there was a community called Sligo located at the intersection of the Washington-Brookeville Turnpike and the Washington-Colesville-Ashton Turnpike, now named Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road. Sligo included a tollhouse, a store, a post office, and a few homes. The communities of Woodside, Forest Glen, and Linden were founded after the Civil War. These small towns largely lost their separate identities when a post office was established in Silver Spring in 1899. Gist Blair was Silver Spring's first postmaster."Postal history – Postmaster Finder ". United States Postal Service. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
By the end of the 19th century, the region began to develop into a town of size and importance. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Metropolitan Branch opened on April 30, 1873, and ran through Silver Spring from Washington, D.C., to Point of Rocks, Maryland.
The first suburban development appeared in 1887 when Selina Wilson divided part of her farm on present-day Colesville Road (U.S. Route 29) and Brookeville Road into five- and ten-acre ( - and m2) plots. In 1892, Francis Preston Blair Lee and his wife, Anne Brooke Lee, gave birth to E. Brooke Lee, who is known as the father of modern Silver Spring for his visionary attitude toward developing the region.
20th century
In the early 20th century, E. Brooke Lee and his brother, Blair Lee I, founded the Lee Development Company, whose Colesville Road office building remains a downtown fixture. Dale Drive, a winding roadway, was built to provide vehicular access to much of the family's substantial real estate holdings. Suburban development continued in 1922 when Woodside Development Corporation created Woodside Park, a neighborhood of plot home sites built on the former Noyes estate in 1923.
In 1924, Washington trolley service on Georgia Avenue (present-day Maryland Route 97) across B&O's Metropolitan Branch was suspended so that an underpass could be built. The underpass was completed two years later, but trolley service never resumed. It would be rebuilt again in 1948 with additional lanes for automobile traffic, opening the areas to the north for readily accessible suburban development.