Women’s History Month and the early days of spring are the perfect time to celebrate Montgomery County resident, writer, and biologist Rachel Carson. Carson, who lived in the County for the majority of her adult life.  She moved to Silver Spring in 1937 to be closer to her work at the federal Bureau of Fisheries, which would later become the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Carson, initially an aquatic biologist, was only the second woman hired at the service in a non-clerical position and excelled to become the Editor-in-Chief for all FWS publications.

Rachel Carson’s career was focused primarily on writing about the creatures and features of the sea—a water world that was becoming increasingly understood by scientists due to exploration and innovations associated with World War II. While Carson’s government writing and the articles and books she wrote in her personal time made this scientific information accessible for the general public, it also gave her readers a sense of awe and wonder in the natural world and an appreciation for our role within it. 

Near the end of her life, while suffering from breast cancer, she penned the book that many consider to be the spark that ignited the modern environmental movement: Silent Spring (1962). This final book represented a literary plea for society to rethink its short-sighted attempts to control nature, specifically its indiscriminate use of synthetic pesticides, which could result in the harm and eventual “silencing” of wildlife like songbirds and eventually all living things.

What is Carson’s local legacy today?

Appreciating Rachel Carson’s legacy of celebrating nature and defending the environment and human health is as easy as listening for birdsong in the morning, noticing the bald eagles and osprey near our cleaner waterways, and pointing out an emerging flower to a child in your life. Her name currently graces a beautiful 650-acre public conservation park in Brookeville, a trailway near two of the houses where she lived in Silver Spring, and an elementary school in Gaithersburg.

And now a four-year-old, community-led effort—Springsong– is making significant progress in its mission to create the first public museum inspired by Carson’s life and teachings, receiving Concept Plan approval from Montgomery Parks to develop a vacant building at Burnt Mills Special Park East in Silver Spring. You can learn more about the nonprofit Springsong Museum’s plans for an accessible, wonder-filled museum on its website.

Guest blog written by Rebecca Henson, Founder and Director of Springsong Museum.