Act naturally: Greenbelt Park offers more than 170 campsites, plus hot showers and bathrooms. Setting up the tent, however, is your department.
Greenbelt, Md., sits in Prince George’s County and is approximately seven miles from the Washington, D.C., city limits. As of July 1, 2009, Greenbelt had a population of 21,439.
If there’s one thing you can say about the town, it’s that it lives up to its namesake. The place is green in many ways. It’s literally swathed in the stuff.
With 1,100-acre Greenbelt Park, 190 additional acres of assorted parkland – which includes Buddy Attick Lake Park – and trees galore everywhere you look, I’m surprised the Incredible Hulk and the Jolly Green Giant aren’t hiding out somewhere in the dense foliage.
The city sits just to the west of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (which has a Greenbelt zip code despite being just outside the city limits) and to the northeast of the University of Maryland, College Park.
If the commuter in Greenbelt doesn’t feel like taking Baltimore-Washington Parkway to U.S. Route 50 into the city, they can use the WMATA Metrorail’s Green Line, which includes a stop in Greenbelt.
Greenbelt was one of three towns created under Resettlement Administration in 1935 under the authority of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, a New Deal program. The first families moved to Greenbelt in 1937. Later, when the feds wanted to sell it off, the folks there formed a housing cooperative that purchased the homes.
And that’s how it stands today, more or less. It’s such a unique history that when Greenbelt celebrated its 60th anniversary in 1997, the United States Department of Interior recognized the town as a National Historic Landmark. When you rent an apartment in Greenbelt, you can learn all about the town’s rich history at the Greenbelt Museum.
Today, Greenbelt offers the renter many things.
Parents will note that Greenbelt has two schools – Greenbelt Elementary and Eleanor Roosevelt High School – that have been designated “Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence.” The Beltway Plaza Mall features Target, Giant and Marshalls. Of course, the city has its Greenbelt CO-OP Supermarket & Pharmacy, so the spirit of community is still there.
Greenbelt also has an extensive menu of recreational activities for the resident.
When you break it down, Maryland’s Greenbelt is an eclectic, green suburb of the big city and a unique, convenient place to live.
