Rachel Carson, a biologist and author of Silent Spring, conducted much of her writing and pesticide studies along the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River in Silver Spring.
Her work is credited in part with being the impetus that created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Now, neighbors in the Woodmore section of Silver Spring, Montgomery Parks and Carson experts have formed a partnership to open Springsong Museum to spread her sense of wonder about the natural world to museum visitors.
“The goal is to connect community and nature through the words and wisdom of Rachel Carson. It’s not simply a museum that tells her story,” said Rebecca Henson, founder and executive director and a Silver Spring resident.
The idea is to take Carson’s main thesis of connection between people and their world to help visitors gain knowledge about their environment, Henson explained. “We all have a responsibility to learn about science,” she said.
The museum will house Carson’s letters and essays, jewelry and samples of her writing as a child when she was learning cursive. Some of the books show how Carson was involved in seeking a cure for her breast cancer. A certificate showing she paid off her student loan also will be on exhibit.
Some of the information comes from Montgomery County resident Linda Lear, author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. Other displays will come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where Carson was employed.
A Montgomery Blair High School AP environmental science teacher who looks forward to bringing her students on field trips there, is involved, Henson said.
The museum also is expected to feature information on communities that have lived in the area, including the Nacotchtank/Anacostan peoples, mill owners and workers and the Black community of Stewart Lane Chapel/Burnt Mills.
The museum is expected to open in two-and-a-half years as plans finalize, fundraising goals are achieved and construction beings. The property off Route 29 is owned by Montgomery Parks, which is working out terms for a long-term lease for the museum, according to Henson.
The “Spring” part of the museum’s name comes from Silver Spring, and the “Song” part refers to “the birds and the frogs, the sounds of Spring that remind us that life is still here and coming back,” Henson said.
The word “silent” in Carson’s book, Silent Spring, referred to an absence of bird calls if people don’t take care of the word around them, she said.
Carson spent much of her adult life in the Silver Spring area and wrote most of her books there as well. She was a board member of what is now Nature Forward in Chevy Chase.
Henson works along with a group of about 20 volunteers and several full and part time employees. The projected cost for the museum is $9 million. Maryland awarded the program $1.25 million. There will be no entry charge.
According to the museum website, Carson was “a National Book Award winning author, biologist, and Montgomery County resident who is often regarded as the “Mother of the Modern Environmental Movement.” Her first three books– Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1955)–celebrated the wonders of the natural world, especially the oceans.”
