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Silver Spring is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C., so it is governed directly by Montgomery County rather than by any municipal government.

The 2020 census counted 81,015 people in Silver Spring, making it the fifth-most populous place in Maryland at that census, behind only Baltimore, Columbia, Germantown, and Waldorf, despite having no city government of its own.

Silver Spring takes its name from a mica-flecked spring discovered in 1840 by Francis Preston Blair, the influential newspaper editor and presidential adviser, who subsequently bought much of the surrounding land.

Acorn Park, just south of downtown, is believed to mark the site of Blair's original spring, and in 1842 Blair completed a 20-room mansion on his estate that he also named Silver Spring.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln visited the Blair mansion several times, and in July 1864 Confederate General Jubal Early occupied Silver Spring on his way to attack Washington at the Battle of Fort Stevens.

The scattered villages of the area, including Sligo, Woodside, Forest Glen, and Linden, were folded into a single community when a Silver Spring post office was established in 1899, with Gist Blair as its first postmaster.

The Census Bureau shrank the CDP's boundaries by about 15 percent for the 2010 census, to roughly 7.9 square miles, so the official population dipped to 71,452 in 2010 before rebounding to 81,015 in 2020.

The 2020 census recorded 33,378 households and 35,150 housing units in Silver Spring, and the median resident age was 35.2 years.

Downtown Silver Spring, next to the northern tip of Washington, D.C., is the community's oldest and most urbanized area and has been rebuilt since 2004 with mixed-use retail, residential, and office development around its Washington Metro station.

Downtown landmarks include the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, the Fillmore Silver Spring music hall, and the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).