Santa made his first appearance at a Fallsmead holiday party on December 20, 1975. The holidays in Fallsmead have been celebrated together as a neighborhood ever since!

 

The first Fallsmead residents to serve on the Fallsmead Board - Jerry Effer, Jack Cove, and Charlie Bauman - were appointed to the Fallsmead Board on December 12, 1968. Prior to that time, the Fallsmead Homes Corporation Board was entirely comprised of representatives from Fallsmead's developer, Kettler Brothers.

 

 

Ballots to approve Fallsmead's new bylaws and covenants were originally due back on December 2, 2009. Because a quorum was not met at that point, the vote was extended to January 31, 2010. By the end of January 2010, 85.2 percent of the community had voted, and the new bylaws and covenants were approved by a vote of 202-46. They officially took effect February 2, 2010, and remain in effect today.

On November 30, 1981, Fallsmead residents voted to approve the incorporation of the 26 "New Fallsmead" homes (Pipestem Court and lower Pipestem Place beyond the pond entrance) into Fallsmead. The legal annexation agreement wasn't approved by the Board until June 28, 1982, after further negotiations with New Fallsmead developers Berger-Berman. 

 

 

 

Ewing property from 1419 Fallsmead Way in 1974 (now lower Pipestem Place). 

 

 

 

 

Many original Fallsmead owners used the Kettler Brothers house model drawings and floor plans to help them decide which Fallsmead house they wanted to buy. The house drawings and floor plans were updated periodically as the neighborhood was being built to account for design changes for specific models. Check out all of the original model drawings and floor plans that we have in our Fallsmead archives on the Fallsmead History page right here at fallsmead.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A proposal to add two new tennis courts on the field between Old Creek Court and the playground using a special assessment of $85 to be collected from all Fallsmead residents was defeated at a community special meeting on November 5, 1976, ending three years of debate over whether to add more tennis courts in Fallsmead.

 

The very first Fallsmead neighborhood website, available at www.rocknet.org, was created by Jim Beller and the Communications Committee in November 1999. The new Fallsmead web pages - which included information about Fallsmead and its amenities, Board, and Committees - were part of the Rockville Community Network (ROCKNET), a non-profit computer-based network designed to promote communications between citizens, community groups, businesses, and the Rockville city government.

The number 3 seems to be the common thread in this week's Fallsmead@50 Fun Fact about Fallsmead Board Presidents. There have been 33 Fallsmead Board presidents in the past 50 years. Here are 3 Fun Facts about them:

 

 

 

The Sumberg family, the first residents to move into the second section of Fallsmead (which began at Fallsmead Way and Infield Courts North and South), moved into their new home at 1309 Fallsmead Way in October 1969. At the time, there were no trees, sidewalks, or streetlights in that section of Fallsmead, and Fallsmead Way only extended to what is now the end of the 1300 block of Fallsmead Way at Pipestem Place. 

 

 

Buddy McCracken, an 18-year old Wootton High School graduate who lived on Duncan Branch Court, was shot and killed at the end of Greenplace Terrace on October 11, 1974. Buddy was trying to stop a group of teenagers from tampering with a fire hydrant when one of the kids pulled out a gun and shot him. A memorial to Buddy was erected near the flagpole in Fallsmead Park and still stands there today. The scoreboard and baseball field at Wootton High School, where Buddy had played on the baseball team, were also named in his honor. 

 

 

The original Fallsmead playground was installed in October 1973. Although some new equipment was purchased in 1993, most of the original playground was still here until 2013, when it was finally dismantled and completely replaced with new equipment.

 

 

 

 

There are 33 Kettler-built houses (those built in 1968-1973) in Fallsmead that are still occupied by their original owners. Two other Kettler original owners still live in the neighborhood, but in a different house. 

 

 

Can you imagine having 8 kids living in your Fallsmead house? Back in 1974 (the first year all 265 original Fallsmead houses were included in a neighborhood directory), there was one house with 8 kids living in it, and 47 houses with 4 or more kids; this year, one house has 5 kids living in it, and only 5 houses have 4 or more kids. More surprisingly (at least to me!), 88% of houses in 1974 had kids living in them; in 2018, only 53% of Fallsmead homes have kids living at home according to the directory.

 

 

 

Elementary school kids living in Fallsmead attended Lakewood Elementary from 1968-1971, but switched to Cold Spring Elementary when that was built in 1972. Fallsmead Elementary became the neighborhood elementary school when it was built in 1974 (it was K-6th until 1994). High school and middle school students in Fallsmead first attended Richard Montgomery High School and Julius West Middle School (then a junior high), but switched to Wootton High School and Robert Frost Middle School (then an intermediate school/junior high) after those were built in 1970 and 1971, respectively.

 

Corner of James Spring Court and Greenplace Terrace on the first day of school in September 1973. Photo courtesy of Tony Buckley from the Fallsmead History Photo Album. 

 

Bus stop at the corner of Infield Court South and Fallsmead Way in 1990. Photo Courtesy of Stacy Shiffman from the Fallsmead History Photo Album.

Fallsmead held a tennis tournament and Family Day at the pool on August 30 and 31, 1969, to celebrate the end of the first season of Fallsmead's pool and tennis courts.  The tennis tournament on August 30th was for kids ages 18 and under. The Family Day on August 31st included water polo, kids and adult swimming races, running races, a bubble gum blowing contest, newspaper races (whatever that was), a marshmallow contest, adult Dixie cup races, and an adult egg toss contest.

 

 

 

Fallsmead was host to several "gigantic slip-n-slide" events on the big hill next to the pond in the early 2000s. Between 2003 and 2005, the slip-n-slides were Fallsmead's big late-August end-of-summer parties where everyone was encouraged to "come prepared to get wet and have a blast!"