On Friday, the town of University Park and the University Park Elementary School celebrated Arbor Day by planting an American beech tree on school grounds next to the town park. Students took part in planting the tree, the 13th planted in the town to commemorate the day.

Trees are central to the town’s identity. Since 2004, University Park has been named a Tree City USA community, one of 41 in Maryland according to the National Arbor Day Foundation. That’s not surprising in a town of 2,000 without any commercial property.

Incorporated in 1936, the town was designed from the start to be a place for single-family homes without any “commercial encroachment.” Little has changed. As the Washington Post recently wrote, it’s “a town that feels like there is a little bubble over it.”

Old-growth trees line a maze of side streets and there are few new homes and no apartments or condominiums. Most houses date back to the early 20th century and a section of town was designated a national historic district.

A “brief history” on the town website website notes that many people from Washington in the mid-1960s would come up to “the country” in the spring to hear the frogs that would gather in the swampy space between the school and Queens Chapel Road.

While Hyattsville, Riverdale Park and College Park have undergone significant development in recent years, University Park has remained the same.