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The story of a former African American "kinship community" that is now an upscale but nostalgic version of its former self.
When serious snow blankets the area, residents of tiny Hawkins Lane in North Chevy Chase don't wait for the county plows. Instead they take up a collection, or get out and shovel the street themselves.
They have no choice. A rustic enclave abutting Montgomery County parkland and the grounds of Bethesda Naval Hospital, Hawkins Lane is not a county road. It's unpaved, unplowed and uncharted as far as officialdom is concerned. By law, it must forever remain so.
HAWKINS LANE
BOUNDARIES: Hawkins Lane is a 1/3-mile long dead-end street fronting on Jones Bridge Road to the south. It is otherwise bordered by county parkland and the grounds of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
SCHOOLS: Rosemary Hills and North Chevy Chase Elementary, Westland Middle, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.
HOME SALES: The most recent house sale was for $755,000 in April; it is one of two homes made to look old but built in 1995. No houses are on the market.
WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE: Medical Center Metro station, Bethesda's Woodmont Triangle shops and restaurants
WITHIN 5-10 MINUTES BY CAR: North Chevy Chase Park, Downtown Bethesda, downtown Silver Spring, Chevy Chase Circle, Metro stations, National Institutes of Health, National Naval Medical Center (Bethesda Naval Hospital), Capital Beltway, Kensington's Antique Row.
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For Hawkins Lane, a dead-end street off busy Jones Bridge Road between Connecticut Avenue and Rockville Pike, is a historic district. It's a designation residents obtained in 1991 to prevent developers from widening the road and replacing their small dwellings with expensive new townhouses and larger single-family homes.
As a result, Hawkins Lane residents are responsible for plowing their street and filling its potholes. Instead of having mail delivered to their doors, they walk to a bank of letter boxes lined up where the street empties out onto Jones Bridge Road.
"We're like a family here," said Bob Camps, a pediatric dentist who with his wife moved from "a huge house" in Bethesda to a smaller one on Hawkins Lane when their daughters went off to college.
Originally, Hawkins Lane really was family. The land was owned by James H. Hawkins, a former slave, preacher and farmer who acquired three acres for $300 from descendants of his white namesake. In the 1920s, his son put in the lane and built six houses for family members and for rent. He sold a few lots, too, for others to develop.
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