News Details (Posted: August 13, 2010):
The History of Chevy Chase
Full Description:

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, DC. (See Washington streetcars.) The Chevy
Chase Land Company was founded in 1890, and its eventual holdings of more than
1,700 acres would extend along the present-day Connecticut Avenue from Florida
Avenue north to Jones Bridge Road.
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. At issue in this "chevauchee" (a French
word describing a border raid) were hunting grounds or a "chace" in the Cheviot
Hills of Northumberland and Otterburn.
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