The Anacostia River, known on early maps of the region as the “Eastern Branch” (of the Potomac River), dissects the northeast and southeast quadrants of the District, a geographic boundary that nearly isolates a quarter of city from the rest of it. In the middle of the river’s path – before it reaches north to Watts Branch and south to its confluence with the Potomac at Buzzard’s Point – lie two small man-made islands and a resulting “lake”. Kingman Island, its adjacent Heritage Island, and the resulting Kingman Lake were created around the turn of the twentieth century as city engineers dredged the banks of the Anacostia. In the 1960s, a proposal to turn the island into an amusement park floated, but never panned out.

There has been a lot of focus on Kingman over the past decade, in terms of clean-up, removal of invasive species, public outreach and education programs and wildlife conservation. Industrial waste and solid trash reduced the area essentially to a series of unofficial superfund sites, with much of the toxic waste coming from years’ worth of dumping from the Pepco Plant just upriver). Ironically, more recently, the disuse of the lake has allowed nature to somewhat reclaim this area of the Anacostia. It is a great bird haven. There are also several families of foxes, and many reptiles and amphibians living on Kingman, as well as beavers, whose trails you can sometimes spot in the muddy ground. Upstream from Kingman Island, the river is largely natural, several miles of tree-lined banks, beavers, bald eagles and wetlands--it's really the best of what remains of the wild Anacostia. 

Oxon Run is a tributary of the Potomac River, and a secondary tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. The creek travels from its confluence with the Potomac across the water from Alexandria at Oxon Hill Farm through about three miles of the Southeast quadrant in Anacostia before crossing the border into Maryland. This “natural channel” once supported large fish populations and the local agriculture in this area of the District city limits and surrounding Maryland counties. Until about the mid-1940s, the area was largely still rural, but urbanization destabilized the creek and has caused both its collapse and concealment in several areas. Today, Oxon Run runs through a namesake park and the surrounding community in the Forest Hills section of Anacostia, with the majority of the creek within D.C. is encased in concrete and has been diverted into stormwater channels.

 

Oxon Run is recognized as an impaired watershed within the District and has a watershed implementation plan approved by the EPA and in place. Oxon Run itself has been trained and rationalized by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, so that its course only partially follows its original path. There is an ongoing trail rehabilitation project along the creek, as well as a sewer rehabilitation project. There are playgrounds, housing communities and parks that all run along Oxon Run and bear its name – one of the city’s most crime-ridden housing communities underwent a transformation in 2009. An extensive bike trail along the historic run of the creek has also been designed and is set to be constructed.

Perhaps the most intriguing draw to Oxon Run is that, despite the blighted urban development around it, it is the site of a magnolia bog – a globally unique plant community that is now very rare in the Mid-Atlantic region.

The Tidal Basin is one of the more iconic sites in D.C., but there is a history to this part of the city’s smallest quadrant that is less recognized than the many monuments and photos of blooming cherry blossoms usually associated with the basin. For example, apparently, there was at one point a public beach along the basin, and public swimming was allowed (for whites only). Congress voted to ban swimming in the basin in 1925, and some public pools (again, segregated) were open around the monuments for a few years, until removed by the mid 1930s.

 

The fish market at the wharf is the oldest operating open-air market in the country, established in 1805. It has been a mainstay of the Southwest community since before the Civil War, much to the chagrin of some city developers. In its earliest incarnation, it served visitors who traveled via steamboat up and down the Potomac River. At one point some samples taken from the market were part of a seafood mislabeling scandal, but that hasn’t deterred locals and crowds of tourists alike from gathering and sampling the offerings. Currently, the "wharf" area is set to be entirely renovated, with developers hoping once again to clear out the name "shantytown" from the SW.

Above and around the Tidal Basin, Constitution Avenue and parts of the National Mall were built atop Tiber Creek. Tiber, also called “Goose Creek,” originated at the Old Soldier’s Home on Rock Creek Church Road in the far NW, and flowed all the way through the city. By the 1870s the creek was in bad shape (due to construction/deforestation shifting the creek bed and boundaries) and was largely used as an open sewer. The creek was diverted during the canal-building period and encased and turned into a sewer line at the turn of the century.

On any given Saturday a trip to Fletcher’s Cove might find you fighting fisherman for casting space in the Potomac, bikers for a lane on the canal towpath, or mallards for a plot to picnic. This quiet area where the river joins the Northwest boundaries of the city, just north of Georgetown, is today a favored recreation spot and urban oasis, accessible by boat, bike or vehicle, though not quite as easily by foot – that is of course, unless you take the towpath. In this shaded eddy, prone to flood, the shad run up the Potomac every spring, and the canal lock rests idly, waiting for a new part in history. Here one can see, perhaps most vividly, the real convergence of natural and architected waterways in Washington.

 

Of the remains of America’s canal-building era, the C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio) Canal is one of the most intact survivors. Chartered in 1825, the canal was meant to connect the Potomac River here in Washington with the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania. Construction on the canal began in 1828, and ended in 1850 in Cumberland, Maryland, near Maryland’s border with West Virginia. The total cost of the project was over $11,000,000.

The C&O operated for close to a century, transporting coal, lumber and other products, but never truly reached its full potential (or developers’ vision), as newer technologies – namely, the railroad – quickly replaced the canal. It was declared a national monument by President Eisenhower in 1961, and is now an oft-visited historic and natural site. Bike enthusiasts, in particular, often trace the towpath from town to town, discovering a bit of the regional history and culture that retains traces of the life of the short-lived American engineering feat.

4 quadrants, 4 sites