Dewey Local Park Playground

Dewey Local Park marks Station #01 of our two-year quest to explore twenty memorable, far-flung playgrounds and the local communities around them. Tucked along winding, tree-lined Dewey Road where Silver Spring, Kensington, and historic Garrett Park meet, the park opens suddenly into a sunlit 14.5-acre valley bowl.

Right away you can tell this isn't a cookie-cutter pocket tot lot. Lime-green climbing towers rise out of an engineered wood-fiber basin, an artificial-turf hillside turns the slope itself into a scramble ramp, and a paved 'Trike Track' loops around the play zone alongside a breezy picnic shelter.

The park takes its name from Dewey Road, a corridor through North Kensington and Silver Spring named during the turn-of-the-century American custom honoring Admiral George Dewey (1837 to 1917) after 1898. Long before suburban cul-de-sacs arrived, these rolling woods drained into Rock Creek, where nearby 19th-century sites like Newport Mills ground local grain.

In 1873, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened its Metropolitan Branch right past this valley. By 1887, railroad developers platted the neighboring Victorian village of Garrett Park, named for B&O President Robert W. Garrett and incorporated in 1898, where nine commuter trains a day steamed to Washington and horse-drawn wagons hauled coal and lumber from the siding. As young families filled the Veirs Mill corridor after World War II, M-NCPPC purchased these 14.5 acres in 1951 to preserve permanent open play space.

For thirty years after its 1990 update, Dewey's older equipment weathered decades of neighborhood play. On October 12, 2020, Montgomery Parks unveiled a top-to-bottom reimagining of the entire property, upgrading 1,400 linear feet of the adjacent Rock Creek Trail, adding modern stormwater gardens to protect the creek, and planting native shade trees grown at Montgomery Parks' own Pope Farm Nursery.

Best of all for four- and five-year-old climbers, the landscape architects kept the natural hillside contour. Instead of staircases alone, kids scale a bright green turf mound, pull themselves up a cargo net, cross suspended rope bridges, and zip back down curved steel slides.

Looking straight over the swings is the park's unmistakable visual anchor: a bold geometric mural of two perched lovebirds painted across the park building walls.

Commissioned through Montgomery Parks' Art in the Park initiative, the mural is the work of Washington, D.C. visual artist Juan Pineda, who has blended cultural traditions with urban-contemporary street art across Maryland and D.C. since the mid-1990s (including Silver Spring's Flower Avenue Urban Park). Against autumn leaves and blue sky, the warm yellows, corals, and teals give the whole playground the warmth of an outdoor neighborhood gallery.

Walk a few steps past the mural and you see how thoughtfully Dewey Park serves multiple generations and cultures at once. Built in partnership with the NHL's Washington Capitals, a 150-by-65-foot dasher-board rink pairs classic suburban inline street hockey with fast-footwork futsal, honoring both longtime Kensington roller-hockey roots and the vibrant soccer culture of Silver Spring and Wheaton families.

Rounding out the community hub are a 2,400-square-foot shaded adult fitness gym right beside the playground and a 22,000-square-foot lighted dog park split into small-dog and large-dog hills.

For a four-to-five-year-old explorer, Dewey hits the sweet spot between confidence-building safety and big-kid adventure. The double stainless-steel slide lets two riders race side by side, while the rope suspension bridge and spiral disc steps reward steady hands and brave feet.

Right across the path, high-backed inclusive harness swings and a fenced toddler zone make sure younger siblings never get crowded out. And if you still have energy afterward, historic Garrett Park's 1897 Town Hall, arboretum streets, and Penn Place cafe sit just three minutes down the road.