Established in the 1850s, it is among the oldest neighborhoods in Montgomery County and is a notable example of a community created by free African Americans before the Civil War.

[1][2] Located in the Silver Spring CDP, Lyttonsville is bordered by East-West Highway (Maryland Route 410) to the south, beyond which is the neighborhood of Rock Creek Forest and, further south, Washington, D.C. Rock Creek Park and Chevy Chase are located to the west, Forest Glen Park to the north, and Woodside and Downtown Silver Spring to the east.

[3][4] In 1853, Samuel Lytton, a free African-American man who worked in the nearby house of newspaper editor Francis Preston Blair, purchased more than four acres of land from a white farmer, Leonard Johnson, on the east side of Brookville Road near today's Garfield Avenue.

The neighborhood lacked running water and paved streets until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Montgomery County government acted after years of lobbying by residents.

The land was sold to developers, who built apartment complexes, an industrial park, a Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission service center, and a Ride On bus depot.