Francis G. Newlands

Newlands was born in Natchez, Mississippi, on August 28, 1846 (or 1848; sources differ). He was the fourth of five children born to Jessie and James Newlands, immigrants from Scotland. His father, trained as a physician in Edinburgh, died in 1851. Newlands was raised in Illinois and Washington, D.C.

In 1867, he went to Yale University but left after his first year. In 1869, he graduated from Columbian College, which is now George Washington University Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 1869. In 1901, he received an honorary M.A. degree.

In 1870, Newlands moved to San Francisco, California. He married Clara Adelaide Sharon, the daughter of future Nevada senator William Sharon, in 1874. They had three daughters. Newlands helped William Sharon to reopen the Bank of California, and supervised the management of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco. When Newlands' wife died, he inherited the Sharon estate. Newlands married Edith McAllister and moved to Nevada in 1888.

Land developer

In the late 1880s, Newlands and his partners began to acquire farmland in northwestern Washington, D.C., and southern Montgomery County, Maryland, to develop a streetcar suburb for the nation's capital. On June 23, 1888, Newlands chartered the Rock Creek Railway for a single-track streetcar. Two years later, Newlands and his partners formed the Chevy Chase Land Company to develop their land, which by then totaled more than 1,700 acres. Between 1890 and 1892, the Land Company built a five-mile extension of Connecticut Avenue from Rock Creek past the District line and into Maryland. The new road included two bridges and a pair of streetcar tracks laid down the center. The Rock Creek Railway opened in 1892. To power the streetcars, the company dammed Coquelin Run, a small tributary of Rock Creek, just east of Connecticut Avenue; the resulting Chevy Chase Lake supplied water for an electric generating plant.

Newlands' development companies attached covenants to lots in Chevy Chase, D.C.; Chevy Chase, Maryland; and later Burlingame, California. These covenants did not explicitly forbid their sale to people of specific races or religions. Instead, they forbade buyers to build homes that cost less than certain amounts — e.g., $3,000 and $5,000 — effectively preventing their sale to members of minority populations with less access to wealth.

Newlands created the Chevy Chase Springs Hotel (later the Chevy Chase School for Girls, now the 4-H Youth Conference Center). Newlands ensured the community included schools, churches, country clubs, tree-lined streets, a water supply and a sewage system. Groceries and daily purchases were brought from Washington, D.C., on the railway at no charge to residents. From 1894 to 1936, the Land Company operated an amusement park on the lake as a means to draw prospective buyers to the development and to keep the streetcars supplied with evening and weekend passengers.

In 1893, Newlands began to subdivide some property he inherited in Burlingame, California. He started with the Burlingame Country Club and five cottages. The following year, he added the Burlingame train station.