Miller Companies are a group of related privately-held real estate firms known for developing residential communities in Washington, D.C. and its surrounding metropolitan area.
[2] William Cammack and Allison Nailor Miller, brothers who grew up in Cleveland Park, were given $2,000 and two vacant lots in the Pleasant Plains area of Northwest Washington by their mother, as an incentive to go into business.
In 1959 hearings before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, testimony noted bars against ownership by Jews in areas controlled by the Miller Companies including Wesley Heights and Sumner, with Spring Valley cited to be "of particular significance" owing to the prominence of its residents.
[10] The below is a direct quotation from one of the restrictive covenants enforced by the company: ″No part of the land hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by, or sold, demised, transferred, or conveyed under, to, or in trust for, leased, or rented, or given to, Negroes or any person or persons of Negro blood or extractions, or to any person of the Semitic race, blood, or origin, which racial description shall be deemed to include Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Persians, and Syrians, except that this paragraph shall not be held to exclude partial occupancy of the premises by domestic servants of the occupants thereof.″ [11] In 1986, the U.S. Army and American University began investigating whether parts of Spring Valley might have been used to dump munitions during World War I, but they did not inform the Miller Companies of the possibility.
A pit containing high explosives and chemical weapons, including Lewisite, was discovered near 52nd Court in January 1993, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began a cleanup under the Formerly Used Defense Sites program.