Walker Mill

Less than a mile east from the D.C.-Maryland line, Walker Mill, MD, is the kind of place where life looks towards the future while also escaping the drawbacks of living amidst progress. There’s no loud cacophony of DC gridlock or frequent road closures in Walker Mill. At worst, you might hear a distant jackhammer laying the foundations for your child’s new after-school activity.

Walker Mill has many of the housing styles that are staples of DC suburbs. Winding streets maneuver through a hilly topography, leaving in their wake rows of cherry blossom trees that cast shade over personalized mailboxes sitting beside sloped driveways. At the tops of each slope sit homes with modest yards bordered by hydrangeas and holly bushes. The area’s homes, many of which sprang up in the early 1970s, signals when midcentury architecture was taking American suburbs by storm. A ranch-style home isn’t hard to find here. Instead, the challenge lies in deciding which option best reflects your tastes. The area is teeming with gabled roofs atop one-story and raised ranches built above single-door garages, as well as second-story overhangs and split levels. Shoppers seeking a recent build are also in luck, as Walker Mill has seen several condominiums and town house complexes pop up over the years. The range in home prices remains relatively tight for Walker Mill, with old homes and renovations alike often sitting around a median of $325,000. Meanwhile, the median for town homes is a bit lower, around $317,000.

Public school students in Walker Mill start at John H. Bayne Elementary. From there, students age up to Walker Mill Middle School and Central High School. The latter offers AP classes and a French language immersion program, in which some students get to go abroad.

After school, students can spend the afternoon at Walker Mill Regional Park. This park’s central attraction is its wonderland-themed playground, allowing children's imaginations to run wild as they grapple faux fallen trees and carvings of cartoonish woodland animals. Over the years, the park has undergone several improvements thanks to a massive redevelopment plan that introduced several new amenities, including a skatepark. The plan includes tons more improvements that will take place over the coming years, such as a ropes course, bike lanes and a fountain fixture for children to play in.

“There’s a lot of amenities that are there right now and a lot more coming soon,” says lead strategic park planner Claire Worshtil. “We are even trying to create some museum space to invite people to see and learn the history of the area.”

One thing to be aware of in Walker Mill is that "It’s a bit of a shopping desert,” says realtor Sur-Raun Calloway of Coldwell Banker Realty. The Walker Mill Square Shopping Center is really the only hub for services, retail, and dining in town. Though not exactly a cultural hub, the shopping center is home to Taste Budds, a Caribbean restaurant serving jerk chicken and coco bread.

But as Calloway points out, the good news is that residents can quickly close distances with the Metro stop in town. Thanks to the completion of an extension of the Silver Line, Walker Mill residents can make a direct route to Dulles International Airport without having to spend hours in DC traffic. And only one stop away in the opposite direction is a quickly growing downtown area. Since the Silver Line’s expansion, Downtown Largo has become the site of a development project that is bringing in a mixed-use shopping center with acres of greenspaces, retail and entertainment just beyond the Capital Beltway. When you get there, you’ll find plenty of options for entertainment, employment and healthcare already waiting for you, as well as plots of land that will soon be home to even more options.

Walker Mill is ideally situated for those seeking the benefits of living near a city without the over–stimulation of city streets. The neighborhood makes up for what it lacks in retail in a peaceful residential area with proximity to parks and retail spaces on the cusp of immense growth.

Written By

Tom Jakob

Photography Contributed By

Jack Adams

Video By

Michael Voyack