750+ Washington DC Metro Area Playgrounds, Mapped
One map of playgrounds across 12 DMV municipalities
During COVID, Mum dreamed of a master map of all the playgrounds in the Washington DC, southern Maryland, and northern VA (NOVA) - collectively “the DMV” area. Filtering through the sparse results for “playground” on Google Maps and looking at the same “Top 10 Playgrounds” lists generated by Yelp and TripAdvisor were not cutting it. Because the DMV area covers 3 States, 6 counties, and 6 independent cities (thanks so much, Virginia!), looking through municipalities’ Parks & Rec websites (of varying qualities) wasn’t a great solution either. Mum wanted a one-stop-show, complete picture of area playgrounds that provided both a way to find playgrounds close to particular points (such as Granny’s house) but also to know about all the best “destination playgrounds” in the area - those worth driving a little ways for just to hear the “Wooaahhh! Cool!” gasps of my kids.
Mum finally put all her GIS/mapping courses to good use to create that map! We’ve also chosen to highlight inclusive, accessible playgrounds in this map; there are so few (its atrocious, really) and if this map helps kids with special needs or disabilities have more fun in more places, that makes us very happy.
This post serves to share our Master Map of over 750 playgrounds across 12 municipalities of the greater Washington, D.C. metro area, and secondly to share photos of a small(ish) selection of awesome and relatively unknown playgrounds to stoke your (and your kids’!) sense of adventure! For clarity’s sake, the covered DMV municipalities are:
Washington, D.C.
Maryland: Montgomery County, Prince George County
Virginia: Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Prince William County, and the independent cities of Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas, and Manassas Park.
We hope more than anything that you find this helpful in finding fun wherever you may be in the area! If we’re missing great spots, need to make any corrections, or for any other suggestions for improvements, please let us know via the comments. We would especially love to know if there are more inclusive, accessible parks we can add.
“Master Map” of DMV Playgrounds
All of these playgrounds are mapped here using the following symbols:
Yellow stars - awesome, stand-out playgrounds; basically, if we thought our kids would see this park and say “wow!” while running straight for it, we marked it with a yellow star.
Purple check marks - inclusive, accessible playgrounds; those set up to allow children with special needs to get onto the play structure.
Blue location marker - all other solid, regular playgrounds. Note that even through they’re not yellow, many of these are still really cool!
Some helpful notes on using the map:
We (obviously) have not visited every single of these parks ourselves (my kids would have LOVED that but sadly their parents have to work and they have to go to school sometimes :P). We’ve relied heavily on Google’s satellite maps, Street View, and photos to confirm mark locations and colors. I’m sure we haven’t got it all right - we welcome your notes in the comments and are happy to make corrections and additions!
Purple trumps yellow - if a playground is both awesome AND accessible/inclusive (making it super extra awesome!), we marked it as purple.
Clicking the “box corners” icon in the upper right corner of the map will take you to the full screen version of the map in Google Maps (and is compatible with the Google Maps app on your phone)!
Clicking a particular icon pops up the park name and a link to that park’s Google Maps page. We encourage you to look through the photos there to figure out if the park suits your needs. Alternatively, if you’re up for a bit of travel, pick a cool park from the picture gallery below! We are contemplating adding a photo to each yellow park in the map in future - let us know in the comments if this is something you’d value.
Photo Gallery of Select Awesome DMV Playgrounds
There are a smattering of very well known playgrounds in the area, covered time and again in blog posts and by Yelp/Trip Advisor. While these are indeed very cool, we wanted to offer the below gallery to underscore just how many truly awesome options there are across the DMV.
Click on any of the pictures below to link to that playground’s location in Google Maps - if you’re truly up for an adventure, let your littles pick from the menu and hit the road :)
Insights from Building the Map
Lastly, in case its interesting to anyone, I will note a few things we learned from mapping ~750 DMV area parks:
There are not nearly enough accessible parks and that really needs to change.
Comparing the 12 municipalities and their playground offerings: Arlington & Montgomery Counties deserve major shout outs for both the quantity and quality of their playgrounds. Kudos also go to Prince George County and Washington DC for impressive playground numbers, but with generally fewer high-quality playgrounds. The remaining municipalities, all in Virginia, have a long way to go to catch up with far fewer parks overall.
Other posts you may enjoy & helpful resources for families in & around the DC metropolitan area:
For restaurants in Guadalajara that kids love, with play places and/or acitivities so grown ups can enjoy a meal in relaxation, go here!
For the best playgrounds and parks in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area (~1 hour south of DC), see our post here.
For our favorite small-size board and card games as a family on the go, or for small homes, check out this post.
As a selective technology family, this post lists our favorite educational apps for children.
You can also check out our full Post Directory for an organized listing of all our blog posts to date.