Glen Echo, MD

At the 2020 census, Glen Echo was a Montgomery County town of 276 people along the Potomac northwest of Washington. The town grew around a place that changed personalities more than once: the Baltzley brothers opened a National Chautauqua Assembly in 1891, the site became an amusement park in 1911, and Glen Echo Park closed its rides in 1968. Today the same grounds are an arts center with classes, workshops, dances, performances, the Spanish Ballroom, and the Dentzel carousel.

The park carries a sharper civil-rights story too. In 1960, Howard University students protested segregation at the carousel; arrests and legal pressure helped desegregate the park for the 1961 season. The carousel dates from 1921, the Spanish Ballroom from 1933, and the National Park Service acquired the grounds in 1970 and began managing them in 1971. Glen Echo is a tiny town with a big cultural parcel: one place where a lecture hall, midway, dance floor, carousel, protest, and art studio all share the same address.