Anacostia River

About

Anacostia River, Maryland — 1608 Captain John Smith Explored, 1990s-2010s Anacostia Riverwalk 9-mi DC Prince George's. The Anacostia is born where the waters of Montgomery and Prince George's counties converge, and from that meeting point it begins a journey toward the Potomac. Depending on how the reach is measured, sources describe it as a six-mile river and as a nine-mile river draining 176 square miles before it joins the Potomac at Washington, DC. Either way, it is a compact urban waterway, a tributary of the Potomac and ultimately of the Chesapeake Bay, and a key part of the larger Potomac River watershed.

Long before Captain John Smith arrived, the Anacostia flowed through the ancestral territory of Indigenous peoples, including the region's historical tribal nations. The river served as a primary travel corridor, hunting ground, and gathering place. That older world was reshaped by the cession framework of the 1800s-era treaties, the 1830 Indian Removal Act, and the allotment era of the 1840s through the 1890s.

Smith's 1608 voyage marks the river's defining historical chapter, when he sailed up the Potomac and into the Anacostia and marveled at its depth, clarity, and abundance. That early bounty did not last unscathed. As the river passes the historic port of Bladensburg, it flows over ground where its foundational ecological wounds were first inflicted — a reminder of how commerce reshaped these waters. From the 1830s through the 1920s the watershed was logged to feed the regional timber industry and railroad expansion, worked by local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations. The exhaustion of the old-growth stands in 1910, the start of state forestry conservation in 1915, and the establishment of state forests in the 1930s brought large-scale logging to a close.

Scientific attention followed. The USGS survey of the 1870s and 1890s, the establishment of gauging stations from the 1880s into the 1910s, and state geological survey streamflow assessments of the 1910s through the 1930s formed the first comprehensive hydrological studies of the river. State water pollution control studies of the 1950s through the 1970s and Clean Water Act assessments from 1972 to 2000 confronted more than a century of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts, with restoration and TMDL programs the major current outcomes.

That restoration continues under the Maryland DNR, which since 2010 has worked with local watershed partnerships to address those accumulated impacts. Streambank stabilization from 2015 to 2024, native fish restocking from 2017 to 2024, nutrient reduction strategy implementation from 2018 to 2024, and water-quality improvements from 2020 to 2024 mark the recent effort. The results are visible along the banks, where cattails crowd the shallows, wood ducks paddle, and pileated woodpeckers hammer the trees — a natural haven within an urban corridor. The river today supports the Bladensburg, Hyattsville, and Washington, DC economies, and is home to Anacostia Park and the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. From Smith's first awed glimpse to its living wetlands, the Anacostia remains a river worth restoring.