On the Eastern edge of Fort Reno, a dirt path hugs a thick row of trees and shrubs. The thin trail that runs through the Tenleytown park isn’t marked: it’s a desire path, gradually worn into the grass by years of feet and bicycle wheels, rounding the bottom of a steep hill and ending at the intersection of Fessenden and 39^th Street. Desire paths crop up in almost any well-travelled grassy park; what’s remarkable about this trail is that it follows the trajectory of an intentionally destroyed city street.

Thomas Street, as it’s marked on an 1887 map1, once ran through a bustling working-class neighborhood known as Reno City, an integrated community that grew on the site of the former Civil War fort.

The location has always been an advantageous site for a settlement; as the highest point in the region, it bordered a Piscataway village and soapstone quarry in the 17^th century.2 In the time before the Civil War, the hill was the farming property of the Dyer family,3 but was quickly seized by the Union army for its visibility and strategic location close to the Maryland border in 1861.4 In the aftermath of the War, the land was returned to the Dyers, who then sold it to real estate developers Newell Onion and Alexander Butts. The pair divided the former estate on Fort Reno into individual plots and listed them at $25 each.5

Many buyers were Black Freedmen looking to settle close to Washington City,6 and by the late 1880s, businesses and local organizations took root in the neighborhood.7 Markets, restaurants, and churches cropped up as residents settled on Reno hill, and institutions that were central to the Reno community for decades, such as the Rock Creek Baptist Church, emerged.8

Both Black and White Washingtonians settled on the Fort, but most of the residents in the Reno subdivision were African Americans who worked blue-collar jobs and resided in family-built homes.9

The sense of community in Reno City was exceptional. As former resident Mary Daniel recalled in 1977, “There was always choir. There were always pageants […] Older people worked with the younger people to give them something to do. They had lawn parties. They had picnics.”10 She also recalled the beauty of Reno’s landscape. “Most everybody had trees of some sort in their yard. And chickens too.”11

Mrs. Augusta Moore, another former resident of Reno, recalled the community’s generosity. “I know if my mother cooked a pot of soup, she’d pass some across the fence to the white lady next door. If she cooked a big pot of soup here comes some over for us. And we all got along very nicely.”12

Reno’s close-knit community served its residents well, but as generations of neighbors flourished, growing hostilities loomed.

On April 9, 1926, the Washington Tribune published a startling report: 

“The colored citizens of Ft. Reno awoke just in time to forestall being driven from their homes by what appears to be the sinister influence of real estate developers.”

For months, Reno homeowners had been harassed by real estate companies, “but the prices offered have been ridiculously low and were refused.” Those who were pressured were Black, “and, strange though it may seem,” the land included in a proposed bill to acquire Reno also included “every piece of land owned by colored citizens in that vicinity.”13

If passed, the bill would designate a total of $1,000,000 towards the condemnation and destruction of homes in Reno City. The properties would be converted into a new reservoir, a public school, and a park, with an entirely redesigned street system.14

The effort to convert Reno into public land had been years in the making.

 As Reno’s economic and social expansion boomed in the 1890s,15 so did nearby all-white developments backed by Nevada senator Francis G. Newlands, an avid segregationist, and his Chevy Chase Land Company. By the mid-1920s, Cleveland Park had grown towards Reno from the South, while Chevy Chase neared the neighborhood’s Northern boundary. Surrounding Reno was Tenleytown, a historic community that pre-dated the newer developments, but which shared their exclusive racial makeup.16

At the same time, Whites-only citizens’ organizations formed in these growing elite neighborhoods.17 They also wanted Reno gone, seeing it as “a blight” on the Northwest D.C. map.18 As early as 1899, Tenleytown residents argued that Reno’s “present condition is very unsatisfactory to the taxpayers and the location is regarded as well adapted” for the development of a public park.19

In 1926, a member of the Northwest Suburban Citizen’s Association, Luther Derrick, continued to press the agenda, claiming that “[Reno City] is the only thing now left for the improvement of that section” of Washington.20

Developers and White citizens’ groups seized upon proposals to wrap Fort Reno into a complex Capital parks system.21 Collaboration seemed advantageous; if real estate soliciting and racist attitudes alone couldn’t make Reno dwellers budge, the power of law behind them might.

As the bill’s hearing opened on June 2, 1926, activist and Reno property holder James Neill spoke up immediately.

“I am Mr. Neill,” he said. “I am opposing the bill.” Neill was quickly told to sit and wait, while those in favor of condemning Reno made their statements.22

The first man invited to speak was Melvin C. Hazen, a District Surveyor who extolled the importance of a unified District highway system. His solution for Reno was simply “to wipe it off, so that the street plan can be developed in harmony with the general plan for the District.” He reminded the senators that “this whole territory of Chevy Chase is a very well developed and very highly developed community, and this area,” Reno, “is more or less a blight on the public development of the highway plan."23

Hazen later reiterated his disgust for Reno, and in doing so, he betrayed the importance of an alliance between White community members and lawmakers. “It is all ill-devised, ill-shaped subdivision that you cannot do anything with unless you just wipe it off, and no private interests can ever do that."24

While Mr. Hazen directed these words to the present lawmakers, he spoke them to the faces of Reno residents. A large group of homeowners were seated for the hearing.

Next, Proctor L. Dougherty of the Chevy Chase Citizens’ Association lamented the lack of a proper high school in Tenleytown, claiming that Reno was “the only section in the immediate vicinity which is available.”25 As Reno resident James Warren would point out later, the claim was demonstrably false. Surrounding Reno City, there were “miles of vacant ground that could be taken for a junior high school without condemning a single house.”26

Luther Derrick of the Northwest Suburban Citizens’ Association echoed earlier statements of disdain. Instead of being a “beautiful” site that “brings Chevy Chase and Cleveland Park right together,” he declared that Reno “is a sore on the body, and on the whole plan of the District. There is no doubt about that."27

When given his opportunity to speak, James Neill ignored multiple interruptions and laughter from the senators before him. “I want you gentlemen to know that I speak from the standpoint of a negro,” he said. 

“It has narrowed itself down to that. Every white gentleman who has spoken here this afternoon has spoken from the white man's standpoint. They have gone on to say that this is an unsightly place, that it is a blight upon the District. Why is it a blight? Simply because negroes occupy it. They want a white settlement there."28

Senators denied claims of discrimination, but Reno residents continued to expose the racist pressure from others in Northwest.

Black people moved to Reno "in order to get out of the way of the people who wanted to be rid of them, and the people who wanted to be rid of them followed them out there, surrounded them, and now they want to drive them out,” said Thomas Walker, a Reno homeowner, Howard-educated lawyer, and activist.

Walker went on to directly accuse the Senators of colluding with neighborhood associations and real estate groups, such as the Chevy Chase Land Company. "You will find it hard to resist the pressure that is coming down on you from people who want you to take that ground from these folks,” he said.29

Reno citizens spoke out against Northwest land developers, exclusive community associations, and the power of Congress; the three formed an extremely powerful alliance, but the moving testimonies of Reno residents made significant waves. The 1926 bill failed to pass.

Although symbolically significant, Reno residents were likely aware that this victory could only serve to buy them time. By 1930, the National Capital Parks & Planning Commission was able to officially focus on condemning Reno with the passing of the Capper-Cramton Act.30 The Act expanded the budget and powers of the NCPPC, and specifically allocated funds to condemn and acquire Capital land for a united parks system.31 Rather than a single, sweeping removal, the destruction of Reno was a slow, creeping takeover which played out over the next twenty years.

“It was a matter of [the government] offering little, what was a little bit of money for what [homeowners] had. Either that or we will condemn your property,” said former resident Eddie Dixon.32

Some residents were given 24 hours’ notice before condemnation, pushing them to accept staggeringly low prices for their family homes.33 Others attempted to negotiate, or pleaded to remain in their houses for as long as the NCPPC would allow them to.34

This slow movement was a painful process for Reno dwellers. But it was also an act of resistance against the groups who wanted to "wipe [Reno] off"35 the Northwest map immediately, and who thought they had already waited long enough to see it decimated by 1926.

“They gradually got out, you know. I don’t know when they all got out,” said Mr. Dixon. “The government had asked us to move around 1930. But we didn’t move ‘til 1935.”

Some stayed even longer, but the late 1940s saw the final decline of Reno City. Residents accepted whatever payments they could secure and settled in other areas of the District. The blocks of Reno, once lined with butchers, barber shops, and family homes, were bulldozed and burned.36 Grass was planted on its rolling hills and Fort Reno became the site of baseball practices and picnics for Tenleytown residents.

Although they were spread across the city, Reno citizens did not give up memories of their community. At least through the late 1970s, former residents held an annual summertime celebration at the park. “We have what we call homecoming out there,” said Mrs. Augusta Moore. “That’s a nice gathering.”37

Today, Reno City has a presence on the Fort again; its houses are demolished, and its people departed, but Reno’s past has begun to resurface, thanks to the work of local historians. In 1977, a group of Wilson High School students conducted a series of interviews and an archaeological survey of Reno, constructing an exhibit with their findings.38 In 2017, local writer Neil Flanagan revived interest in Reno City when “The Battle of Fort Reno” appeared in the Washington City Paper, sparking a flurry of local attention and the installation of a new informational sign in the park.39

Despite the recognition of its plight in recent years, Fort Reno remains an isolated and often silent corner of Northwest. The park’s idyllic sights are a stark reminder of the hundreds of people who were displaced by its construction, those whose fond experiences in Reno’s community were made painful and complicated by its end.

“When you think of 1935 and 1977, there’s a vast difference of years there, so therefore, those older ones that were out there, we can almost count them on our fingers,” explained Mary Daniel, forty years after her family’s flight from Reno. “But we still keep in touch.”40