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is part of the Oxon Hill-Glassmanor census-designated place (CDP) in southern Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. Oxon Hill is located immediately south of Washington, DC and east of Alexandria, Virginia. It is the home of the new National Harbor development on the shore of the Potomac River .
Oxon Hill was named for the colonial 18th century manor home of Thomas Addison (which burned in 1895 but was replaced in 1929 by a large 49-room neo-Georgian-style home called Oxon Hill Manor, standing on a bluff over the Potomac River). The current Manor is now owned by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and is used for cultural activities as well as being rented for weddings and special events (it reopened in Oct. 2007 after repairs). Oxon is an abbreviation for the Latin
, meaning "of Oxford." The area now known as Oxon Hill reminded Addison of the area near Oxford, England. The Revolutionary patriot John Hanson died while visiting the first Manor, and may be buried there in an unmarked grave.
Today the community is bisected by the busy Capital Beltway (I-95/495) and is near the interstate Woodrow Wilson Bridge, whose wider replacement opened to traffic on December 15, 2008, bringing great relief to the 250-300,000 daily vehicles which formerly backed-up daily into Oxon Hill for decades. (Thousands of white-collar commuters working in Northern Virginia's booming economy find that housing is cheaper in Prince George's County, Maryland). Highway interchanges and ramps near the bridge were also re-aligned and re-configured.
Oxon Hill includes many garden apartment and townhouse communities along with single-family detached homes built mostly between the 1940s when suburban development began, through the early 1990s, including the incorporated town Forest Heights. In earlier decades, many residents were scientists from the adjacent U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Air Force personnel, or musicians in military bands, but very few are now, as today such professionals prefer newer and more upscale communities. Oxon Hill's two principal shopping centers ("Rivertowne" built about 1980 which includes a K-Mart and Home Depot, and "Eastover" built about 1955) attract neighborhood customers as well as shoppers from nearby Southeast Washington, D.C. Eastover, located at the D.C. state line, is a hub of many bus routes, some of them operating 24 hours a day, and has a Prince George's County Police station. The apartment communities closest to the D.C. line are informally called by their original name "Glassmanor" although rental companies have officially given them newer names. A rather unusual community feature is a nursing home operated for an ethnic Filipino population who are numerous in Oxon Hill and Fort Washington.
Until about 1960, the community used the mailing address Washington, D.C. before getting its own postal designation. About 1980, the United States Postal Service detached the two-thirds of greater Oxon Hill that was furthest from Washington, D.C. and re-defined that part as a new postal designation Fort Washington, MD. To make mail sorting easier at that time, the new postal boundary line separating the two Maryland communities was drawn along already existing zip code boundaries (the former zip 20021 portion of Oxon Hill remained Oxon Hill with the new code 20745, while everything in the former zip 20022 portion of Oxon Hill about 1980 was automatically re-named the new Fort Washington 20744). Illogically, this partitioning re-assigned some areas that seem to be almost in the heart of Oxon Hill (such as all of the Bock Road, Tucker Road, Murray Hills, and Brinkley Road areas, including several large prominent churches, Rosecroft Raceway, the ice rink, and ironically even Oxon Hill Middle School) to instead Fort Washington mailing addresses, which can cause confusion.