About Silver Spring

Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice, it is an edge city that had a population of 81,015 residents as of the 2020 census. This makes it the fifth-most populous place in Maryland after Baltimore, Columbia, Germantown, and Waldorf; and the second-most populous in Montgomery County after Germantown.The downtown, located next to the northern tip of Washington, D.C., is the oldest and most urbanized part of the community. Downtown is in turn surrounded by several inner suburban residential neighborhoods located 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 surrounding land. Acorn Park, south of downtown, is believed to be the site of the original spring.