Day 12: Edward Snowden’s Childhood Home / Layton Stret / Courts of Crofton / Cedar Grove
Edward Snowden’s childhood home on Knightsbridge Turn
Edward Snowden’s memoir, Permanent Record, has a section devoted to Crofton. I find it an interesting perspective so I’ve included it below. (Note: Knights Bridge should be one word.)
“We lived in Crofton, Maryland, halfway between Annapolis and Washington, DC, at the western edge of Anne Arundel County, where the residential developments are all in the vinyl-sided Federalist style and have quaint ye-olde names like Crofton Towne, Crofton Mews, The Preserve, The Ridings. Crofton itself is a planned community fitted around the curves of the Crofton Country Club. On a map, it resembles nothing so much as the human brain, with the streets coiling and kinking and folding around one another like the ridges and furrows of the cerebral cortex. Our street was Knights Bridge Turn, a broad, lazy loop of split-level housing, wide driveways, and two-car garages. The house we lived in was seven down from one end of the loop, seven down from the other—the house in the middle. I got a Huffy ten-speed bike and with it, a paper route, delivering the Capital, a venerable newspaper published in Annapolis, whose daily distribution became distressingly erratic, especially in the winter, especially between Crofton Parkway and Route 450, which, as it passed by our neighborhood, acquired a different name: Defense Highway. For my parents this was an exciting time. Crofton was a step up for them, both economically and socially. The streets were tree-lined and pretty much crime-free, and the multicultural, multiracial, multilingual population, which reflected the diversity of the Beltway’s diplomatic corps and intelligence community, was well-to-do and well educated. Our backyard was basically a golf course, with tennis courts just around the corner, and beyond those an Olympic-size pool. Commuting-wise, too, Crofton was ideal. It took my father just forty minutes to get to his new posting as a chief warrant officer in the Aeronautical Engineering Division at Coast Guard Headquarters, which at the time was located at Buzzard Point in southern Washington, DC, adjacent to Fort Lesley J. McNair. And it took my mother just twenty or so minutes to get to her new job at the NSA, whose boxy futuristic headquarters, topped with radomes and sheathed in copper to seal in the communications signals, forms the heart of Fort Meade. I can’t stress this enough, for outsiders: this type of employment was normal. Neighbors to our left worked for the Defense Department; neighbors to the right worked in the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce. For a while, nearly every girl at school on whom I had a crush had a father in the FBI. Fort Meade was just the place where my mother worked, along with about 125,000 other employees, approximately 40,000 of whom resided on-site, many with their families. The base was home to over 115 government agencies, in addition to forces from all five branches of the military. To put it in perspective, in Anne Arundel County, population just over half a million, every eight hundredth person works for the post office, every thirtieth person works for the public school system, and every fourth person works for, or serves in, a business, agency, or branch connected to Fort Meade. The base has its own post offices, schools, police, and fire departments. Area children, military brats and civilians alike, would flock to the base daily to take golf, tennis, and swimming lessons. Though we lived off base, my mother still used its commissary as our grocery store, to stock up on.””
Just one street over from Edward Snowden’s boyhood home is my boyhood home. My childhood home in 2021.
My brother, mother and me in front of our home in 1981
Looking west on Layton Street in 2021
Looking west on Layton Street in 1980. (That’s me.)
Growing up it seemed rare that flags were at half mast.
A rare reminder of Crofton’s agrarian past off Mayfair Place
Scenic Route 3 at night
You can never be sure who is snooping around the Lake Louise bushes at night
Miles: 13.58
New streets run: 45
Bargers Road | Barrister Court | Braddock Drive | Cameron Court | Candleberry Court | Cedar Grove Road | Clubhouse Gate Road | Crofton Parkway | Danewood Court | Davidsonville Road | Fallowfield Court | Flatwood Court | Friar Court | Grey Birch Court | Kensington Place | Kings Place | Knightsbridge Turn | Layton Street | Marlow Place | Mayfair Place | Nestlewood Court | Nutwood Court | Peartree Court | Peartree Lane | Pecantree Court | Pepperbush Court | Persimmontree Court | Pleasant Meadow Road | Queens Court East | Queens Court West | Ralston Place | Reading Street | Regents Park Road East | Regents Park Road West | Reynolds Court | Reynolds Street | Rochester Court | Rochester Street | Roxboro Place | Sablewood Drive | Squire Court | Stonegate Avenue | Summersweet Court | Thornbury Court | Yeoman Court |
Progress: 290 of 344 Crofton streets run (84.3%)
Cumulative total to date.