In the late 1880s, Newlands and his partners began to acquire farmland in northwestern Washington, D.C., and southern Montgomery County, Maryland, in order to develop a residential streetcar suburb for the nation's capital. On June 23, 1888, Newlands chartered the Rock Creek Railway for a single-track streetcar. Two years later, Newlands and his partners purchased more than 1,700 acres and formed the Chevy Chase Land Company. Between 1890 and 1892, the Land Company built two bridges, constructed five miles of road, and laid streetcar tracks along the road. The Rock Creek Railway opened in 1892. To supply the electricity to the streetcars, the company dammed Coquelin Run, a small tributary of Rock Creek, just east of Connecticut Avenue; the resulting Chevy Chase Lake supplied water for an electric generating plant. From 1894 to 1936, the Land Company operated an amusement park on the lake as a means to draw prospective buyers to the development and to keep the streetcars supplied with evening and weekend passengers.