In 1874-75, Major Leander P. Williams assembled a farm out of four parcels of land known by the names Good Luck, Magruder’s Plains Enlarged, The Levels, and Offutt’s Adventure. He bought them from Col. Ninian Beall, Benjamin Berry, and Alexander Magruder, who had received the original patents to the tracts from Lord Baltimore, proprietary of Maryland. Fifty years later, on February 2, 1925, the District Heights Company bought the 504.93-acre farm from Major Williams’ estate for $60,000. The company had been formed by Joseph Tepper, David L. Blanken, Henry Oxenburg, Gilbert Leventhal, Simon Gordon, and Simon Gerber for the specific purpose of developing a residential community. At the time of the purchase, the land was being farmed by Walter and Al Dustin, whose descendants still live in the area. Their farmhouse stood on the site of the present house at 7116 Foster Street, which was built by Mr. Tepper, president of the development company.
By the summer of 1926, approximately 25 homes had been built and two businesses had been established—the gas station at 72nd and Marlboro Pike and the Sanitary Grocery Store (later Berry’s) at Gateway and Marlboro Pike. In the course of the development work, graders ran into a pipe that apparently was a relic of what records referred to as “the great oil strike.” Two oil wells had been drilled, it seems, one on 73rd Street just off Halleck and the other on Berkshire. The amount of oil pumped from them is not known.
