History of the Rockshire development, Rockville, MD

The farmhouse, the pool and surrounding townhouses.

Rockshire is a housing development in the west part of Rockville, Maryland.

The development was built on farmland that was originally owned by Thomas Sprigg Wootton and other Wootton family members. T.S. Wootton  was  the founder of Montgomery County in 1766.  His son,  Richard Wootton owned the grist  mill (no longer extant)  referenced in the Wootton's Mill Park name.  

In the 1800’s the Wootton farm was owned by the Benson family. By the 1900’s the farmland  was known as the Two Brothers farm, and it was under that name when C.C. Veirs became the last owner to run it as a farm.

The farm was one of many dairy farms in the area.  The adjacent property to the Northeast was the Winding Lane  farm owned by the Hurley family-the Hurley-Carter farmhouse is still extant and is located 411 Feather Rock Lane.  Further north on the North side of Route 28 was the  giant King Farm, which was only fully developed recently. 

Two Brothers Farm house

The Two Brothers Farm house is still extant. It can be  found right  next to the Rockshire community pool. The farmhouse was at the center of the original property, and was built around 1880. The  unpaved  road that leads from the farmhouse originally terminated at West Montgomery Avenue.  In the 1900’s the farm was a dairy farm, till the last owner, C.C. Veirs sold all but  1.5 of 500 acres  to a developer  in 1959.  The Two Brothers farmhouse  sat on those 1.5 acres. C.C. Veirs died in 1973, and the farmhouse was sold to somebody outside the Veirs family during the 1970’s.  The Veirs family had  also had other  houses nearby including  the original location of the  A.B. Veirs Paving firm which included the original log cabin built near Wootton's Mill   and a  house built in 1951  that eventually became the Karma Academy(that house burned down recently ). Thomas Veirs owned a house on Route 28 near Glenora Hills (that house was replaced  recently by a commercial property")

Rockshire was transferred from builder to another

Rockshire before development, 1952

Rockshire area 1963

A view of what eventually become Aintree Drive, and Wootton Mill  Park.    (Billy Veirs and Neil Bernstein)

The development of most of the Two Brothers farm land  did not start till 1969.  The Yeonas company built most of the houses of Rockshire in the early 1970’s.  The first development, the building of Hurley Avenue and the houses near the west end of Hurley avenue were  called Tract One.  Tract one  was built in about 1970-1971. Some of these houses are not part of the  Rockshire Association.  '

Surveyor's documents for Eton Overlook, 1969

Tract Two was built in 1971-1972, these were  the  townhouses near Wootton High School.   Tract three were the houses on the East side of Watts Branch which  were built next in 1973 and beyond. Two  further large tract of houses adjacent to Lakewood Elementary were built   in 1974.  At least two other small tracts were built later, these were the luxury townhouses near the village pool, and a  few houses built in 1990  on  part of the old A.B. Veirs property.  
 

The nearby housing developments of Glen Hills, Glenora Hills, were built before Rockshire.  Fallsmead, Carter Hill and Saddlebrook  was built around the same time as Rockshire. Watts Meadows, Horizon Hills, Fallsbend, Cambridge Heights, and Fallswood,  were built afterwards. The Lakewood country club was founded in 1960.  The gas station and the hotel at Hurley avenue and Route 28 bottom of existed   from the early 1970’s on. Nearby Route 28 existed before Rockshire but   was straightened in the 1970’s or 1980’s as was nearby Seven Locks Road.
 

Rochshire area partially developed in 1975.

The adjacent interstate highway 70S predated the development and was fully in place by 1960. The Highway number was changed from 70s to I-270 in 1975. 

Houses in a exit ramp

Originally the highway  exit ramp to Route 28 had actual houses inside the exit loop, but these were eliminated when the bridge over the   exit was rebuilt, in the 1980’s.  In 1989, I-270 was widened to twelve lanes (2-4-4-2 configuration) from the wye split in Bethesda all the way to I-370 (9 miles). The exit on Fall Road was reconfigured around this time.  The long pedestrian bridge at the  Route 28 exit to 270 was built more recently.  The state police barracks (since closed)  and the small  Water gauging  station  in Watts Branch  Park predated Rockshire.

 

Location of Frost and Wootton schools

 

The neighborhood schools were all built originally between 1969 and 1974. Lakewood opened in 1969, Wootton in 1970, Frost in 1971 and Fallsmead in 1974.  These schools have been renovated or rebuilt (Lakewood) since then.  Wootton High School is highly ranked in lists of the nation's best public high schools-and the  high property values in Rockshire reflect that!

Wootton Parkway (originally called West Ritchie Parkway) was built in sections; the  first section was originally the preexisting Scott Drive that starts at Fall Road.  The next  section built  was the section  near the Rockshire shopping center, the bridge over Watts Branch was added in about 1972. The section of  parkway that goes by Lakewood Elementary School was built next, and the part of the road that goes East from Falls Road into Rockville was built much later.   Originally it was thought that the Wootton Parkway would be a divided road, thus the wide road bed (and never used support pylons on the bridge over Watts Branch)  but that never occurred and instead a path was built, now called the Millennium trail.    The two traffic circles on Hurley avenue are recent additions.  

The Rockshire pool was built in the early 1970's at the same time as the development,  the nearby Collingswood nursing home was built in the 1970’s.  

The two other   buildings on Hurley Avenue , were added  a few years after the development was built.   Among them was the Temple Beth Ami which operated in a building near the Rockshire pool from 1980 to 1998 (it  moved to a new building on Travilah Road).  The Korean Presbyterian Church took over that building.  Further up on Hurley Road currently  is the American Latvian Association.

The paths and pedestrian bridges in the Watts Branch park were added in the mid to late 1970’s.  

The Rockshire Village shopping center was opened in 1978 , and the Giant grocery store anchored it till  2012.  The shopping center was originally going to bigger but was downsized in the planning process, plans for a possible post office or library was also shelved in 1980, (instead the luxury townhouses near the pool were built). The shopping center  was shut down in 2015 and plans are to replace it with  houses.   Rockshire is now over 40 years old and has  753 homes, it is one of the largest  and best developments in Rockville.


Related links:
A History of Winding Lane Farm (site of Carter Hill)

411 Feather Rock lane (Hurley Farm House)  

History of the Two Brothers farmhouse  

History of Fallsmead from the Fallsmead website

Why is Veirs sometimes spelled Viers?

 

The sections labeled 41 are Rockshire..

Originally published October 2015, by J.C.Bernhardt

Rockville, MD-How it changed over time.

Rockville, MD. is in Montgomery County, a  prosperous suburb of Washington, D.C.  Rockville is far enough away from downtown D.C (15 miles) that till recently, farmland still existed in it's environs. 

Rockville was chosen as county seat of Montgomery County in 1777, but it didn't get the name of Rockville (Derived from Rock Creek) till 1801.  In the 1800's it was a small town, but by WWII had become a small suburban city.

1803

Since WWII , Montgomery County has been quite a rich county, largely recession proof due to it's proximity to the federal government and it's well educated workforce that comes from all over the country and the world.  Partly due to the availability of  sections   of  undeveloped or partly undeveloped land in most  of the county, there has been a constant flow of development and redevelopment  all through out  the post war period.  Thus, many of the streets, plots, buildings, highways, in Rockville have all been redeveloped since I first moved there in 1972. I moved there from a residential district in Northwest Washington D.C.called Chevy Chase. I lived in Chevy Chase in the 1960's.

Rockville appears in the movie 1964 movie  Lilith. It's a 1964 movie starring Warren Beatty that was partly filmed in the town of Rockville, MD .  Right away I was struck about how much at changed in 50 years  since the movie, and all at various times. To start with the mental hospital (Chestnut Lodge) , that was  depicted (but not shown) in the movie, has been closed (apparently the main lodge burned down) and the land  turned into a housing development. 

But ,The Rockville of 1960's is nearly almost un-findable today,  They blew up the downtown to build the Rockville Mall in the early 1970's and the renovated the mall a couple times before demolishing it. In recent years they restored some of the streets that were taken away to build the mall.

In recent years the main library was rebuilt, , the main shopping strip on Rockville Pike has been  redeveloped constantly. The main highway through Rockville, was widened to become a 12 lane parking lot.  One of the  main roads into town, Montrose Road was redirected in the 1990's. Another road,  the Wootton Parkway was slowly built as sort of a town beltway.  Most of the open land around the town has been developed.

Ramp to the Rockville Mall

Congressional Plaza when it had a Giant Grocery Store

Downtown Rockviille before redevelopment

1947

1983

Related Posts at Felpin's Pond  : What happened to Roy Rogers Restaurants. What happened to Roy Rogers restaurants?

A history of Rockshire A history of Rockshire

I remember Chevy Chase felpinspond.blogspot.com/2012/09/i-remember.html

Peerless Rockville (a historical site about Rockville)

Originally posted October 2013

Roy Rogers Restaurants back in the day

In the mid-1970's my family and I used to go every Sunday to Roy Rogers Restaurant. It was one of the  bonding activities, that my father chose to do to  keep us together after my mother died.   We usually went to a midday Sunday  mass, and then  we would drive to the Congressional Plaza in Rockville, MD to the Roy Rogers there. I would always  have a Coke, Fries and a burger. My brother would always get the Roast Beef Sandwich. I don't remember what my sister would get. Originally, the chain had girls in fancy cowgirl  miniskirts out on the floor, cleaning the tables, that was kind of cool.

Vintage  Roy Roger Commercial from Youtube

Roy Rogers Congressional Plaza -1960's

The 1970's and 1980's  were the golden age of Roy Rogers Restaurants. The chain was  assembled by the Marriott Corporation  in  1968, it  used  the name of Roy Rogers,   moderately well known   star of movie Westerns  to sell fast food . Many of the original  locations were rebrandings of RoBee's House of Beef, and  some   Junior  Hot Shoppes locations.  

Roy's food was a cut above other fast food chains, and I think that  was true of most of the food I ate there, though the chicken was not as good as Kentucky Fried Chicken. They were most known for their incredible Roast Beef Sandwiches  which the staff cut by hand, and could be added to at a fixing bar with whatever condiment you wished. The very salty french fries were also of high quality, and were apparently cooked in vat of beef tallow and vegetable oil, a mixture which was later changed.

 Roy Rogers  were owned by the Marriott Corporation, which started as the owner of Hot Shoppes  restaurants in the Washington area  but over time expanded into food service, hotels and bad airline food.     Marriott  managed to bring Roy Rogers to 600 locations until in 1990, Marriott sold Roy's to Hardee's, a lower quality fast food restaurant, that excelled at breakfast and little else.   Not a good idea.

Hardee's  quickly switched most of the Roy Rogers Restaurants to  the Hardee's brand name, which was greeted with wide disdain, to the point where many of the switched Hardee's had to be switched back to the Roy Rogers nameplate.  But the damage was done, and eventually most  of the Roy  Rogers leases and franchises   were sold off to other restaurant chains, notably McDonalds's.   Fortunately, the tattered remnants  of chain survived. at first with just  13 stand alone  restaurant franchises   and  some over-priced highway rest stop locations, run by HMS travel hotel. Roy Rogers  Restaurants is now run by son  of one of  men who created the chain, and they have slowly brought back  to almost 50 locations.


Roy Rogers Restaurants -official site

Also from Felpin's Pond_
How Rockville, Maryland changed over time

An article about Hot Shoppes...

The Hot Shoppes

Posted originally April 2012 by J.C. Bernhardt