Rock Creek Park ⓘ

Not until 1883 was sufficient interest generated to revive the Rock Creek park proposal. In that year Capt. Richard L. Hoxie, assistant to the engineer commissioner of the District of Columbia, advocated a park embracing all the Rock Creek region in the District north of the Washington City limits, east of Tenleytown Road (present Wisconsin Avenue), and west of Rock Creek Church Road. Hoxie's plan had a utilitarian basis: the need to increase the city's water supply. To do this, he proposed a major dam across the creek just above Georgetown; it would create a four-mile-long reservoir submerging the portion of the valley later occupied by the National Zoological Park. [ 12 ]

That November three prominent civic leaders, William Wilson Corcoran, Justice William Strong, and Josiah Dent, communicated their support of a Rock Creek park to the District commissioners. Their letter recalled Michler's report and the early interest it had stimulated and cited the benefits to New York from Central Park, to Philadelphia from Fairmount Park, and to Baltimore from Druid Hill. Anticipated objections were countered with the "worthless lands" argument often used by early park proponents:

A large part of the grounds needed, though admirable for a public park, is worthless for agricultural or building uses, arid most of it is undesirable for residences, in its present condition; but the establishment of the park would add greatly to the value of the lands surrounding it, would make them very desirable for rural residences, and, in fact, would prove a bonus to the owners of such surroundings. It may be presumed, therefore, they would sell to the city such portions of their lands as may be included in the park for a very moderate price, or even donate them.... [ 13 ]

The correspondents urged the commissioners to seek congressional authority for park establishment, and they and others of their class lobbied Congress directly. On June 17, 1884, Sen. Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware introduced a joint resolution "upon the recommendation and continued application of gentlemen well known to us all, large property owners, men of intelligence, of character, and cultivation in this city " Explaining the background of the Michler survey, he said that Frederick Law Olmsted had been enlisted to help revive interest and had prepared the preamble of the resolution. It asserted that Rock Creek valley was ill-adapted to the extension of city streets, which would destroy "passages of scenery of extraordinary interest and public value." [ 14 ]

Bayard's resolution called for appointment of a joint committee of three senators and five House members. They would review the Michler report, make further surveys under the direction of the Secretary of War, and report back to the next session of Congress. Wholly tentative in nature, the resolution provided for no appropriation and no further action. It passed the Senate without difficulty, but as with the Brown bill 17 years before, the House did not act. [ 15 ]

On June 2, 1886, Sen. John J. Ingalls of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, introduced legislation "[t]o authorize the Commissioners of the District of Columbia to condemn land in Rock Creek for the purposes of a park, to be called Rock Creek Park." The bill would layoff a park not exceeding 1,000 feet wide from Massachusetts Avenue to the District line. The cost would be ascertained by agreements with landowners and condemnation proceedings where necessary; the District commissioners would then report to Congress so that it could decide whether to appropriate the necessary funds. The Senate again approved the bill, which was then referred to the House and recommended by its District committee. [ 16 ] But again it was kept from a vote on the House floor.

Senator Ingalls resurrected the measure in the following Congress, and Rep. Jonathan H. Rowell of Illinois introduced a companion bill on January 9, 1888. As reported by the House District committee, Rowell's bill would direct the District commissioners to survey and plat the proposed park. The survey map would be recorded and the land condemned, but no money would be paid unless and until appropriated by Congress. If Congress did not act within two years, all proceedings would be voided. [ 17 ]

Rep. John J. Hemphill of South Carolina, House District committee chairman, brought the bill to the floor on August 13. He and other proponents declared the proposed condemnation procedure necessary to fore-stall undue increases in land prices as a result of government interest. They argued that the measure was in effect a fact-finding bill that placed no obligation on Congress should it judge the expense too great. Minimizing the probably cost, they suggested that certain landowners would be willing to donate to the park.

Others were unpersuaded. Their reaction reflected the long-standing hostility to District expenditures of congressmen whose distant constituents benefited little from taxpayer-financed local improvements. "If I gave an opinion I should say it was clearly, very clearly, a plan to commit this Congress to a proposal to expend perhaps a million dollars, more or less..., to secure this creek bed and banks, inclose, protect, and beautify them at the expense of the Government, the primary result being to largely enhance the value of the speculative holdings of the owners of real estate thereabout...," said Rep. Lewis E. Payson of Illinois. Opponents burdened the bill with so many weakening amendments that Hemphill requested and obtained unanimous consent to return it to his committee for revision. [ 18 ]

Undiscouraged, the local interests behind the park project redoubled their efforts. That Thanksgiving Day, Charles Carroll Glover, a prominent Washington banker, Capt. Thomas W. Symons, assistant to the District engineer commissioner, and other civic leaders rode through Rock Creek valley. A few days later at Glover's house, Crosby S. Noyes of the Evening Star newspaper presided over a strategy session. There followed a mass meeting at the Atlantic Building on January 11, 1889. Glover, Noyes, F. A. Richardson, George E. Lemon, B. H. Warner, and A. T. Britton were appointed a permanent executive committee to lobby for passage of park legislation. [ 19 ]

On January 14 Hemphill introduced a new bill, which his committee reported favorably to the House 12 days later. In addition to the aesthetic argument for the park, the report cited the health hazard that would arise if development and its attendant sewage were not kept away from Rock Creek. The new bill, it noted, set a 2,500-acre limit on land acquisition and specified the same condemnation process recently adopted for obtaining the Library of Congress site across from the Capitol. The House declined to consider the bill, however, and the Senate took no action on Ingalls' bill, reported from committee there on February 15. Hemphill tried but failed to attach his park measure to another pending bill, enacted March 2, 1889, that established the National Zoological Park in Rock Creek valley under the Smithsonian Institution. [ 20 ]

On April 29, 1895, before building any roads or taking other steps to facilitate public access, the Board of Control adopted the first regulations for use of Rock Creek Park. In doing so it was aided by copies of regulations requested from managers of large city parks in Brooklyn, Baltimore, and elsewhere.

The board forbade driving (carriages) or riding except on existing roads and bridle paths; driving or riding horses, bicycles, or tricycles more than 10 miles per hour, and coasting with the pedaled vehicles; discharging of firearms or fireworks; cutting or defacing vegetation and damaging structures; hunting, trapping, and fishing; fires; and overnight camping or "tarrying." There were to be no public assemblies by advertisement, except that group picnics could be scheduled with the board's permission. Livestock grazing and bathing were prohibited, but both were subsequently allowed under permit. Offenses were punishable by fines of from five to fifty dollars. [ 18 ]

In 1912 the speed limit for all vehicles was raised to 12 miles per hour, but no motor vehicle seating more than eight persons was allowed. The latter provision was waived for a private bus service arranged by the board: a bus left 18th Street and Columbia Road hourly, traversing the Zoological Park and Rock Creek Park via Beach Drive to Brightwood. The trip cost 10 cents each way, with around trip without stopover available for 15 cents. The board reported that the service had proved "very popular." [ 19 ]

Bathing was supposed to occur only where "secluded from the observation of persons passing along the public roads," but this proved difficult to enforce. An indignant citizen wrote the District engineer commissioner in 1913 to ask that bathers be kept from the park. "These boys and young men commit all kinds of nuisances, such as exposing their persons to passes by, profanity, in it's worst form, fighting, throwing stones...", the correspondent declared. "Ninety-five percent of this crowd is of the lowest or degenerate type, and the fact that they are permitted to bathe here without molestation, encourages the assembly of a tough element of ruffians that would never infest this park under any other conditions." Lee Grabill recommended to the Board of Control that bathing permits be ended, but the park continued to accommodate the activity in designated areas into the 1920s. [ 20 ]

In July 1922, with automobiles predominant among park users, the Public Buildings and Grounds office announced a rule against night parking in Rock Creek Park. There was widespread objection from the many persons and families who tried to cope with Washington's oppressive summer heat and humidity by parking and sleeping in the cooler valley. Colonel Sherrill retreated and instructed Army Capt. W.L. McMorris, superintendent of park police, "to use discretion in administering the order, which is aimed solely at persons parking at late hours of the night and early hours of the morning for immoral purposes...," according to the Evening Star newspaper. Readers were assured that the regulation had been designed only "to protect the law-abiding public from nuisance and young girls from waywardness." [ 21 ]

In keeping with local custom, developed picnic grounds in the park were racially segregated. A 1921 memorandum from Colonel Sherrill to Francis Gillen reaffirmed this policy and prescribed signs to distinguish the picnic areas as "white" and "colored." Rep. Martin B. Madden of Illinois, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, objected to the policy and succeeded in relaxing it. After Madden's death in 1928, U. S. Grant III as director of the Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks moved to revive picnic segregation. [ 22 ] It did not remain official policy, but the races customarily kept to themselves in this and other park activities.

Among the first park facilities was Camp Good Will, a summer camp for underprivileged white children accompanied by their mothers. Begun in 1904 by the Committee on the Prevention of Consumption, a local charity, it was sited between Milk House Ford and 16th Street. It was joined by the Baby Hospital Camp, for poor infants suffering from "summer complaint."

A public golf course was begun in the same general area in 1907 but was not completed. Foreman Patrick Joyce supervised construction of a new nine-hole course on the site between October 1921 and May 1923. This forced relocation of Camp Good Will to a six-acre site west of Rock Creek, north of the Civil War Fort DeRussy, in the summer of 1923. Washington architect Arthur B. Heaton contributed building designs and landscape architect John H. Small laid out the grounds for the new camp, now operated by the Summer Outings Committee of the Associated Charities. Civic clubs were solicited for construction funds, and an administration building, dining hall, nursery, two pavillions, two bathhouses, three dozen tent platforms, a pool, and ball fields were built. As it had previously, the camp served 150 mothers and children for two-week periods, with the attendees staying in tents. [ 23 ]

The new golf course was operated by Norman B. Frost and Harold D. Miller in 1923 and 1924, but the Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks judged their management unsatisfactory and declined to renew their concession contract. In 1925 the Joint Welfare Service, a War Department affiliate, operated the course and Public Buildings and Public Parks added another nine holes. A year later the concession went to the Park Amusement Company, which became the S. G. Leoffler Company in the mid-1930s and held the concession until 1982. [ 24 ]

In 1911 the Board of Control acquired an unwanted addition to the park. Joaquin Miller, a colorful California poet who affected rustic ways, had built a log cabin on 16th Street near the site to be developed as Meridian Hill Park. The California State Association sought to move it to Rock Creek Park. The board refused the request, but Sen. John D. Works of California intervened successfully on the association's behalf. [ 25 ] The cabin was placed near the east bank of Rock Creek north of Military Road and used as a shelter. After Miller's death in 1913 his family maintained ties to the cabin. In 1931 Public Buildings and Public Parks leased it to Pherne Miller, his niece, who conducted art classes and sold candy and soft drinks there until the mid-1950's.

Pierce Mill, Rock Creek Park's most prominent historic feature, is situated on the west bank of Rock Creek a quarter mile below its confluence with Broad Branch. Built in the 1820s by Isaac Pierce and his son Abner, the granite structure is the only one standing of several mills on Rock Creek in the 19th century. The park commission acquired the mill property in 1892. The mill continued to grind corn and grain, until 1897, when its main shaft broke.

About 1905 the Board of Control permitted Mary Louise Noble to operate a tea house concession in the picturesque building, to which an enclosed frame porch was added on the upstream side. Florence I. Blake of the Dolly Madison Candy Company succeeded her a decade later, but the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds ousted Mrs. Blake in October 1919 for providing poor service and failing to pay her $60-per-month rent promptly. Hattie L. Sewell, a black woman, obtained the concession for $45 a month in 1920. Her presence prompted complaints from E. S. Newman, a prominent park neighbor and trustee of the Pierce-Shoemaker estate, who saw the place becoming "a rendezvous for colored people, soon developing into a nuisance." Colonel Sherrill told Newman that he had received no other complaints and that under Mrs. Sewell the tea room's service had been satisfactory and business had increased. [ 26 ]

Newman persisted. Doubtless as a result of his influence, Sherrill advised Mrs. Sewell that her contract would not be renewed in October 1921 and that the tea house would be turned over to the Joint Welfare Service, which would use the proceeds for charity. This arrangement had not been cleared with the Joint Welfare Service, which declined to take the concession. Sherrill then induced the Girl Scouts Association of the District of Columbia to fill the role. It began its service in November 1921, boosted by publicity from Public Buildings and Grounds. "A delightful air of hospitality will be found always in evidence at the tea house, as the management is directly under a large committee of ladies prominent in Washington society and there will be some one of these actively in charge each day," Sherrill announced in a press release. Among the specialties offered were "Harding waffles," honoring the incumbent president. The Girl Scouts Association was allowed to use the second floor of the mill as living rooms for the attendant in charge. [ 27 ]

Asked to justify for the record the absence of competition in selecting the new concessioner, Sherrill provided a statement at sharp variance with his initial reply to Newman:

Competition was not deemed advisable in letting this concession because of the fact that it would be impossible to select or obtain in that way the type of proprietors desired. The party who operated the tea house prior to this concession was the high bidder in a competition. A great many complaints were received and a large number of people stopped patronizing the place. In order to overcome the prejudice which had grown up it was thought best to select the proper party who would operate the establishment to the best interest of the public and of the government. [ 28 ]

For unrecorded reasons the Girl Scouts Association did not long continue to run the Pierce Mill tea house, and the Welfare and Recreational Association of Public Buildings and Grounds, Inc. (successor to the Joint Welfare Service), was persuaded to take charge. It held the concession until 1934, when the mill ceased to function as a tea house.

In 1919, the last year of Florence Blake's deteriorating operation, Colonel Ridley had instructed Horace W. Peaslee, an architect on the Public Buildings and Grounds staff, to investigate the possibility of restoring Pierce Mill in appearance if not function. Pierce submitted his report that November. He favored upgrading the structure as a restaurant featuring al fresco dining, with some old mill components replaced for atmosphere:

The restoration of the mill feature in part brings up the question as to whether or not it would be well to attempt, for the sake of historical record, to put back, without competing with the new function of the property, the essential parts of an old-time mill. Enough could be readily obtained or reconstructed to connect up the main working parts and the effect would be right, whether or not the wheels were continuously turning The first impression of the problem was not favorable to the attempted restoration of the mill-wheel as the last wheel used was an unpicturesque turbine, and the reconstruction of the preceding undershot wheel would leave it high and dry, fanning the air without any possible water-weathering or suggestion of a past. With detailed study, it is believed that the wheel could be restored if made apart of the proposed general restoration including necessarily a flume, race and spillway, partly following the old lines and partly conforming to and strengthening the new design. [ 29 ]

No action was taken on Peaslee's recommendations, nor was another proposal two years later adopted. Warren J. Brown, a local entrepreneur, then suggested to the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds and the Commission of Fine Arts (which reviewed the aesthetics of government projects), a fully operational restoration of Pierce Mill; he would run it and sell the ground meal. Charles Moore, chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, responded by advocating the treatment Peaslee had recommended. Colonel Sherrill wrote Brown, "It seems to me that from a business standpoint it would be a most unprofitable undertaking for you, and could not fail in my opinion to detract from the attractiveness of it." [ 30 ] When the mill came under new management in the 1930s, however, Brown's vision would prevail.

As the largest preserve in the nation's capital, Rock Creek Park would have its share of prominent visitors. Best remembered among them is Theodore Roosevelt.

"When our children were little, we were for several winters in Washington, and each Sunday afternoon the whole family spent in Rock Creek Park, which was then very real country indeed," Roosevelt recalled in his Autobiography . "I would drag one of the children's wagons; and when the very smallest pairs of feet grew tired of trudging bravely after us, or of racing on rapturous side trips after flowers and other treasures, the owners would clamber into the wagon." [ 31 ]

While in the White House I always tried to get a couple hours' exercise in the afternoons--sometimes tennis, more often riding, or else a rough cross-country walk, perhaps down Rock Creek... Often, especially in the winters and early springs, we would arrange for a point to point walk, not turning aside for anything--for instance, swimming Rock Creek or even the Potomac if it came in our way. Of course under such circumstances we had to arrange that our return to Washington should be when it was dark, so that our appearance would scandalize no one. On several occasions we thus swam Rock Creek in the early spring when the ice was floating thick upon it We liked Rock Creek for these walks because we could do so much scrambling and climbing along the cliffs Once I invited an entire class of officers who were attending lectures at the War College to come on one of these walks; I chose a route which gave us the hardest climbing along the rocks and the deepest crossings of the creek; and my army friends enjoyed it hugely--being the right sort, to a man. [ 32 ]

Another high official park user during Roosevelt's administration was Adm. George Dewey of Manila Bay fame. A cool man under fire, Admiral Dewey once suffered such fright in the park that he wrote Col. John Biddle, District engineer commissioner, about it:

There came very near being a vacancy in the Admiral's grade yesterday. I was driving in Rock Creek Park, near the Military Road, having just turned at that Road and started back, when a large tree, which I had passed a minute before, fell not a hundred feet in front of met directly across the road, breaking into three pieces. I think in ten seconds more I would have been under it! This causes me to mention to you that in my drives through the park I have noticed a number of trees along the banks, as well as some along the Military Road, leaning badly and looking as though they were liable to fall.

Capt. Jay J. Morrow, acting for Biddle, assured the admiral that dangerous trees would be removed. [ 33 ]

Woodrow Wilson enjoyed drives and walks in Rock Creek Park during his presidency. In September 1915 he was courting Edith Boiling Galt, who would become his second wife. His driver would take them to a point on Ross Drive, let them walk alone in the woods, and pick them up at a point further along the road. [ 34 ]

After World War I the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds undertook to remove numerous dead trees, mostly blighted chestnut. Hundreds were sold to private cutters for telephone and telegraph poles. President Wilson was disturbed. "[C]ouldn't you give the trees in Rock Creek Park a vacation?" he wrote Colonel Ridley in April 1920. "I have been distressed by the number I have seen cut down there." Ridley answered that the only trees being cut were already dead and that the work was being done ''as a necessary part of the park preservation" in accordance with a 1918 report by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm. [ 35 ]

Wilson was unpersuaded. "I do not profess to be a forester, but the great majority of trees that I have noticed laying prostrate in the park are certainly sound," he replied. "1 know a sound tree when I see it inside the bark. Moreover, in one part of the park a whole plantation of young pines...have been cut down and it made my heart ache to see it." Ridley sent this message to Superintendent Gillen with orders to cease cutting any more trees, large or small, dead or alive, until further notice. Gillen responded that the cut pines were outside the park boundary, and Ridley so informed the president. [ 36 ]

Wilson maintained his interest in the park after he left office in March 1921 and moved to a house on S Street. That June, upset about news of the forthcoming golf course construction, he wrote Colonel Sherrill:

Is it possible that it is true that a golf course is to be laid out in Rock Creek Park? I am loath to believe that such an unforgivable piece of vandalism is even in contemplation, and therefore beg leave to enter my earnest and emphatic protest. That park is the most beautiful thing in the United States, and to mar its natural beauty for the sake of a sport would be to do an irretrievable thing which subsequent criticism and regret would never repair.

Sherrill replied evasively, suggesting that the tract under consideration was suited to the purpose but claiming that no definite steps had been taken other than to determine the public's wishes in the matter. The golf course construction began that October, as planned. [ 37 ]

A memorial in Rock Creek Park honors another prominent park user of the period: Jules Jusserand, French ambassador to the United States from 1903 to 1925. Jusserand was close to Theodore Roosevelt and often accompanied the president on his romps through the park. Congress authorized the memorial in June 1935, the Fine Arts Commission approved Joseph Freedlander's design for a granite bench a year later, the Jusserand Memorial Committee raised the necessary funds, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the completed memorial on November 7, 1936. Placement of the memorial in the park, overlooking Beach Drive and the creek a short distance south of Pierce Mill, worried Rock Creek's National Park Service managers at the time: they feared it would constitute a precedent for further memorial intrusions in the natural setting. But the Jusserand bench remained the sole commemorative feature in the park. [ 38 ]

A natural preserve surrounded by advancing urban and suburban development would inevitably face threats to its integrity. On the whole, Rock Creek Park was ably defended by its military custodians from adverse external pressures and encroachments.

The first major threat of encroachment was an 1897 proposal by the District of Columbia Water Department to construct a reservoir in the park. Finding the proposal objectionable, the Board of Control referred it to Attorney General Joseph McKenna for an opinion that it hoped would buttress its position. McKenna did not disappoint, replying that under the Rock Creek Park legislation the board was precluded from permitting any such development foreign to the stated park purposes. [ 39 ]

The reservoir proponents thereupon drafted new legislation to authorize their objective. They contended that the reservoir would be an attractive addition to the park. Faced with likely enactment of the authorization, the Board of Control negotiated a happy compromise. The park boundary in the vicinity of the desired reservoir site, north of Blagden Avenue and west of 16th Street, was uneven. If the Water Department would purchase certain tracts, the board would exchange an equal or lesser amount of parkland for them so as to leave the department with an adequate reservoir site and the park with a straightened boundary.

Authorization for this bargain was incorporated in an act or Congress approved June 6, 1900, which resulted in construction of the Brightwood Reservoir and net enlargement of Rock Creek Park by seven square feet. [ 40 ] (The reservoir became obsolete in the 1930s, and its site is now occupied by tennis courts and ball fields.)

In January 1898 Rep. Alfred C. Harmer of Pennsylvania and Sen. Francis M. Cockrell of Missouri introduced bills that would authorize each state to erect in the park an exhibition building for "any and all articles or things connected with its natural or industrial resources or evidencing its social, scientific, or artistic progress and development." The states would be given from one to six acres apiece for their buildings. [ 41 ] The office of the District commissioners recommended against passage, stating that the development would conflict with the intended park purposes. The scheme did not threaten further.

In 1911 the United States Forest Service obtained permission to plant trees for experimental purposes north, south, and east of Camp Good Will. The Board of Control asked that the trees be set in irregular patterns to avoid the appearance of artificial cultivation. Several species of willow and a few poplars were installed the next spring. By 1920 the Forest Service had planted about 2000 trees comprising 170 species and planned to continue plantings from all parts of the world. [ 42 ]

The Forest Service and other parties supporting this venture hoped to expand and formalize it, with congressional approval, as the National Arboretum and Botanic Garden. The Fine Arts Commission thought otherwise. A 1917 report prepared by its landscape architect member, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., declared the project incompatible with the natural qualities for which Congress had established Rock Creek Park. "It does not now, and it never will, look like a part of the natural scenery," the report said of the existing arboretum. "It is distinctly out of harmony with it." Olmsted repeated his stand in his report prepared for the park's managers a year later. As a result, the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds in 1920 disapproved further extension of the arboretum. [ 43 ]

The office continued its own planting of certain exotic vegetation including Japanese honeysuckle to stabilize embankments from erosion. In May 1920 Charles Moore of the Fine Arts Commission wrote Colonel Ridley to warn of the spreading, destructive nature of the plant: "It will kill anything but the largest trees, and unless pains are taken to keep it down, for it cannot be exterminated, it will ruin Rock Creek Park." At the same time Moore called Ridley's attention to the problem of people carrying dogwood and other flowering plants from the park. [ 44 ]

The Board of Control was also willing to allow introduction of non-native birds to the park. According to its 1912 report:

Through the subscription of private individuals and at the suggestion of Dr. Cecil French, D.V.S, some wild ducks, wild geese, and black, white, and gray swan, were presented last fall to the park and are generally prospering. A few have disappeared and there does not seem to be much mating. Some English and golden pheasants were also presented, but were almost all killed by some unknown animal. [ 45 ]

The board spent $164.51 during fiscal years 1907-1909 for feed for wildfowl. It was less hospitable to certain other exotic animals, however. In 1911 it reprimanded the Chevy Chase Club, an exclusive country club nearby in Maryland, for fox-hunting with a pack of hounds through the park. [ 46 ]

At the turn of the century the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, chaired by Sen. James McMillan of Michigan, sponsored a study of Washington's parks. The McMillan Commission, as it was known, consisted of four prominent civic artists: architects Daniel H. Burnham and Charles F. McKim, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. Their report, The Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia, was edited by Charles Moore and published in 1902. With the strong advocacy of the Commission of Fine Arts, established in 1910 with Burnham, Olmsted, and Moore as initial members, the report had great influence on the later development and expansion of parklands in and around the city.

Rock Creek Park, the commission found, was among the areas needing improvement: "This territory, beautified by nature, is undeveloped, save for a few roads, the location of which was obvious; and before the public can fully realize the advantages of the purchase Rock Creek Park must be improved according to a systematic plan prepared by landscape architects." [ 47 ]

Narrow as the present road is, and skillfully as it was built, there are several points where it has very appreciably injured the scenery, and to widen it by any considerable amount would be a calamity. It is true that the value of the park scenery depends absolutely on making it conveniently accessible to the people, but nothing can be gained if the means of access destroys the scenery which it is meant to exhibit, and we believe that as wide a road as the future population is likely to demand would injure the character of the valley irremediably. Possibly the solution is to be found in the ultimate construction of another and wilder drive, or drives, high enough on the valley sides to leave the wild sylvan character of the stream at the bottom of the gorge uninjured, but yet within site and sound of the water and seeming to be of the valley. Such a road would doubtless require more grading, would cost more, and would destroy more trees and more square yards of pretty under-growth than a road at the bottom of the gorge, but the damage of the latter would be done at the vital spot. It would be the pound of flesh from nearest the heart, while the former would compare with the amputation of a leg. [ 48 ]

The commission recommended six additional land purchases totaling 303 acres to prevent overlooking crests from being developed and to take the park up to boundary streets separating it from adjacent property. It also advocated western extensions along the Soapstone Branch and Broad Branch tributaries, in the latter case to Fort Reno. [ 49 ]

Whereas the McMillan Commission only touched upon Rock Creek Park, being more concerned with the monumental city core, the Olmsted Brothers report ordered by the Board of Control in 1917 focused on its development and expansion. The Olmsted Report was completed in December 1918. [ 50 ] Its tone was set by its opening sentence: "The dominant consideration, never to be subordinated to any other purpose in dealing with Rock Creek Park, is the permanent preservation of its wonderful natural beauty, and the making of that beauty accessible to the people without spoiling the scenery in the process."

The report spoke of the park's two kinds of scenery--the larger landscape pictures and the intimate details:

These two sorts of scenery are not peculiar to Rock Creek Park, but in this beautiful valley with its many ramifications they are found in a high degree of perfection and in almost unlimited variety. It is the extraordinary combination of this circumstance with the proximity of the valley to a great city that gives to the Park its unique value. This is the value which was first preserved by Act of Congress for the benefit of all people. It is now and always will be the only value that can justify the maintenance of this great natural park.

The approach taken by Olmsted Brothers was to divide the park into defined landscape units, based on the vegetation that should prevail in each, and recommend measures for their enhancement and maintenance. Artificial development should in all cases be unobtrusive. Structures "should be so designed and located as to fall naturally into place as part and parcel of the scenery, and should never stand out as objects complete in themselves with the surrounding landscape becoming merely a background." Roads and trails "should always and unmistakably fit into the landscape as harmonious and subordinate parts of the scenery through which they pass." The report urged higher appropriations for park maintenance and development of a trained work force directed by "a man with a thorough knowledge of plants and forestry and above all with a keen artistic appreciation of the aims and possibilities of the work".

Accompanying the report were graphic renditions of recommended land additions, the landscape units, a system of park drives, and two proposed thoroughfares across the park (from Yuma Street on the west to Taylor Street on the east and from Utah Avenue on the west to Madison Street on the east). Land acquisition should receive priority, the report stated, especially on the west side from Pierce Mill north along Broad Branch nearly to Military Road, on each side of the narrow parkland strip then following the eastern tributary of Piney Branch, and at the northeast corner of the park.

The Olmsted Report was approved by the Fine Arts Commission, and in February 1919 Colonel Ridley announced its adoption by his office. "Nothing will be done hereafter in this park which is contrary to the letter or spirit of this report without specific approval in writing of the Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds," he ordered. At the same time he appointed a Rock Creek Park Board within the office "to assist the Officer in Charge in carrying out this development in a logical, continuous, and artistic manner." He detailed to the board two landscape architects on his staff: James D. Langdon (who had aided the McMillan Commission) and Irving W. Payne. They were to study the Olmsted Report, recommend on its implementation, and inspect and report on the work done. In the process they were to "consult freely with the landscape member of the Commission of Fine Arts taking every opportunity to present to him on the ground important details of work proposed." [ 51 ].

The landscape member of the Fine Arts Commission was James L. Greenleaf of New York, who succeeded Frederlick Law Olmsted, Jr., in 1918. At the commission's request, Greenleaf wrote Ridley at length with his comments and elaboration on the Olmsted Report. [ 52 ] He began by remarking on the perennial tension between preservation and use:

The Report declares the "dominant motives" of the Park to be to preserve its natural character of wooded valley and upland and open meadow, and to make it accessible to the public with the least, injury to this natural beauty. The two motives are inevitably opposed in any naturalistic park and increasingly so in proportion as a large city grows about it. Yet they must be balanced and adjusted, and this basic problem of adjusting artistic values and utility will arise continually in a thousand different places... Features of utility are necessary that the Park may be of use, but always there must be dominant a clear appreciation of its natural charm and a determination that it shall not be sacrificed. A recognition of this is vital to the preservation of values in Rock Creek Park.

"The rectifying of boundaries is an important matter and the Report rightly urges immediate attention to this before real estate values make the problem more difficult," Greenleaf continued. "The scenery is not panoramic, but instead the views are now chiefly those of woodland valley, bordered by hills wooded to the skyline. How unfortunate if this foliage skyline be replaced by obtrusive rows of buildings, gaping down into the Park...."

All are inroads upon the natural scenery, more or less necessary it is true and therefore more or less justifiable, but to be handled with great caution and restraint. The advice given is to hold all structures down to simple forms, easily assimilated by the rustic scenery. This is to be commended if the idea be not carried too far. Designs made so rustic as to be a straining for that effect are unsatisfactory. A needed building, for instance, should not be obtrusive in its style of architecture but on the other hand, it should not be wildly rustic in a vain attempt to blend with woodland scenery Over all stands this general policy: limit artificial structures and keep them simple.

Greenleaf reluctantly accepted picnic grounds in Rock Creek Park but urged a strong stand against auto camping:

The Report recognizes the inevitable demand upon the Park Management for utilities when it suggests picnic groves at suitable places. If carefully policed such are not serious blemishes in the woodland and valley scenery, but frankly, they are danger spots in the higher development of the Park and should be firmly controlled Right now...comes the request from the Board of Trade for motor parking grounds in the Park where visitors by motor to the city can camp inexpensively while they are exploring the political centre of the United States. The park is for the public and open spaces in it are cheap. What more plausible? Need we state the serious objection to this proposal? Even in great parks like the Yellowstone such parking and camping places are necessary evils, that grate upon one's sensibilities. In the narrow, charming river valley of Rock Creek Park they would be an unmitigated, vulgar intrusion upon its sylvan beauty. If parking places for this laudable purpose are to be provided let the city take unused land that is not vital to scenic efforts. and so develop it. The valley of Rock Creek must be held inviolate.

Greenleaf's discourse to Ridley on the Olmsted Report reflected his concern that the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds was unequal to the task of implementing it. "Col. Ridley has difficulties of organization and daily administration," he confided to commission chairman Charles Moore. "My fear is that the valuable ideas the Olmsted Report gives shall never bear fruit under the deadening influence of daily routine." [ 53 ]

Moore was also inclined to criticism of the park's management under Ridley's office. In a letter to Olmsted in December 1921 he wrote, "It seems to me the park has been rather neglected in various ways, and the Commission wants to give the park particular attention during the next year." [ 54 ]

The following March Greenleaf expressed the commissions sense in a letter to Ridley's successor, Colonel Sherrill. "There can be no doubt that serious damage is occurring and this damage can be checked solely by intelligent and thorough handling," he wrote, calling for prompt suppression of weed growth. "There is a hill-side at a western entrance to Rock Creek Park which, with its cedars rising against the sky was reminiscent of an Italian hill-side. When I saw it three years ago, these cedars were shrieking under the throttling grasp of wild honey-suckle and tree weeds. Now as one passes he hears only a smothered moan. I call that hill-side 'The Tragedy of the Cedars.'" He urged Sherrill to study the Olmsted Report on this and other matters: "Its words as to a permanent trained force, and control by a man of imagination and artistic feeling and training withal, are as apples of gold in a silver dish." [ 55 ]

Sherrill did not take kindly to Greenleaf's implications of mismanagement and neglect. "The line of procedure indicated in your letter has been consistently followed for many years, and the report of Mr. Olmsted, with which I am entirely familiar, has been of the greatest service in administering the park...," he retorted. "There is no lack of a trained force, or of control of a man of imagination and artistic feeling in handling the matters connected with Rock Creek Park. The only difficulty is, and has been, that appropriations adequate to accomplish all the necessary work cannot be secured for the purpose." Nevertheless, he wrote, an expert forester recommended by the Forest Service had been employed by his office in the park for the past year and had accomplished much recommended by Olmsted. Sixty percent of the dead chestnuts had been removed and their areas replayed with more than 25,000 seedling trees. 50 acres north of Milk House Ford had been cleared of weed growth, and three acres around Fort DeRussy had been cleared of shrub pine to free the cedars. "In view of the above," Sherrill concluded, "I am sure you will agree that the administration of Rock Creek Park is not devoid of intelligence as intimated in your letter." [ 56 ]

Greenleaf hastened to assure Sherrill that he had meant no personal criticism and appreciated the work done. But criticism of Rock Creek Park's management continued. It would be repeated by professional representatives of the bureau succeeding the park's military government, the National Park Service, a dozen years later. [ 57 ]

Rock Creek Park was and is limited to the creek valley north of the National Zoological Park. When Congress authorized its establishment in 1890, little or no thought was given park treatment of the degraded valley from the Zoo south to the Potomac River. Later, under a separate commission, the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway was established and developed there. The parkway--the term encompassing the strip of park land, not just the road extending along it--continues southeast along the Potomac from the creek to West Potomac Park at the Lincoln Memorial. Here we shall be concerned primarily with the portion above the creek mouth: although never officially part of Rock Creek Park, it has long been administratively linked with the larger park and is properly considered an extension of it.

The histories of urban streams frequently conclude with their tunneling and conversion to underground sewers, hidden from public view beneath city streets. Such was the fate of Washington's Tiber Creek, initially transformed in its lower reaches as part of the Washington City Canal, then buried beneath B Street Northwest (today's Constitution Avenue) after the Civil War. By the late 1880s the lower portion of Rock Creek seemed destined for similar treatment. It carried odiferous sewage from adjoining industrial development. Its valley had become an unsightly dumping ground and was perceived as a barrier to convenient access between Georgetown and Washington. "Arching" the creek and filling in the valley over it would cover the sewage and refuse, eliminate the need for bridges, and create valuable new land for building.

A Senate resolution of July 22, 1892, asked the District engineer commissioner, Capt. William T. Rossell, to prepare plans and estimates for converting Rock Creek below Massachusetts Avenue into a closed sewer and to compute the net gain from the increased value of the filled land over the cost of the valley land that would need to be condemned. Reporting back on January 10, 1893, Rossell sought to discourage the project. Efforts were then underway to divert all sewage into the Potomac below Washington; planned use of Rock Creek for other than storm water drainage "would be wrong in principle and enormously expensive," he wrote. "From a sanitary standpoint I can see no necessity for covering the creek at all if the sewage is kept out of it." [ 1 ]

Rossell appended a report by Capt. Gustav J. Fiebeger, his assistant, estimating that more than six million cubic yards of fill would be needed to level the valley. Another appended report by another assistant, Capt. James L. Lusk, raised the specter of flood waters backing up and inundating portions of the city if the inlet to the covered lower creek became clogged by debris. Proponents of filling the valley were not persuaded by these adverse reports, but they made no major progress during the decade in advancing their objective.

The lower valley next became an object of federal action in 1900, when Congress authorized and appropriated $4,000 for the Army chief of engineers to examine and report on "a suitable connection between the Potomac and the Zoological parks" and to employ "a landscape architect of conspicuous ability in his profession" for the purpose. Brig. Gen. John M. Wilson, the chief of engineers, referred the task to Col. Theodore A. Bingham, officer in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, who engaged Samuel Parsons, Jr., a New York landscape architect. [ 2 ]

The larger mission included a plan for the Mall area, on which Parsons lavished most of his attention. He provided for a road extending west from the Washington Monument and turning north on the alignment of 23rd Street, with the space between 22nd and 24th streets made an open parkway. This straight course did not hit Rock Creek until near O Street, whereupon it followed the winding valley up to the Zoo. The valley below N Street, running west of the straight north-south segment, was thus excluded from park treatment. Secretary of War Elihu Root endorsed the Parsons plan in reporting it to the Speaker of the House. Colonel Bingham confessed that the plan had been hastily prepared, however, with "some minor points which it is not intended should be carried out exactly as they appear on the drawings" because "the draftsmen were not personally familiar with the ground they were deliniating." [ 3 ]

The Parsons plan received no homage from the distinguished McMillan Commission, whose work followed close upon it. The commission's 1902 report called Rock Creek valley below the Zoo "unsightly to the verge of ugliness." The situation was not helped by the lack of resolution about filling it versus leaving it open. "The need for a definite plan of treatment is shown in a striking manner by the fact that on the line of Connecticut Avenue a bridge is in course of construction [the present Taft Bridge]; while on the line of Massachusetts avenue a culvert is building, the obvious intention being to fill the entire valley southward to the mouth of the creek." [ 4 ]

Although the fill carrying Massachusetts Avenue would "interfere with the perfect execution of the open-valley plan," the commission strongly recommended this alternative "on grounds of economy, convenience, and beauty." Travelers along drives and paths depressed below the surrounding grade would be spared views of the "shabby, sordid, and disagreeable" tenements and factories adjoining between Pennsylvania Avenue and Q Street. "It is therefore a very fortunate opportunity that permits the seclusion of the parkway in a valley the immediate sides of which can be controlled and can be made to limit the view to a self-contained landscape, which may be beautiful even though restricted." By retaining the valley, moreover, east-west crossings would continue by bridge rather than at grade and would be less disruptive to a park experience. [ 5 ]

The Washington Board of Trade favored the McMillan Commission approach. The Georgetown Citizens' Association did not, preferring that at least a portion of the valley be filled to improve access between Georgetown and Washington. Sen. Nathan B. Scott of West Virginia and Rep. William S. Cowherd of Missouri introduced bills responsive to the Georgetown interests in January 1904. They called for putting Rock Creek in a culvert from Lyons Mill (adjacent to Sheridan Circle) down to 25th and O streets, which would eliminate the easterly bend of the creek between those points, and building an avenue atop the fill. The Georgetown Citizens' Association solicited the support of the District commissioners for the legislation, and the commissioners declared that if Congress voted such an extraordinary expenditure they would favor it. [ 6 ] A year later Sen. Shelby M. Cullom of Illinois introduced another bill incorporating a pet scheme of Richard J. Beall, a former District official; it would arch the creek from L Street up to Connecticut Avenue, where a dam would create a large bathing pool. The District commissioners opposed this plan, and Congress took no action on any of the bills. [ 7 ]

Faced with continuing and conflicting pressures to do something about the lower valley, Congress provided another $4,000 in the fiscal 1908 District appropriations act for another study. The District engineer commissioner, Maj. Jay J. Morrow, and his assistant, Capt. E. M. Markham, were charged with preparing plans and estimates for the treatment of the valley below Massachusetts Avenue, "both by open-valley method and by conduit." [ 8 ]

The resulting report, submitted in May 1908, assumed at the outset that some form of parkway was called for: "A park effect of one kind or another is unquestionably the essence of any possible treatment of Rock Creek between Massachusetts avenue and L street...," Markham wrote. The two engineer officers examined four alternatives: a conduit with fill carrying a 160-foot-wide boulevard from Massachusetts to L; the same with a 400-foot-wide boulevard; a conduit with fill carrying a 160-foot-wide boulevard from L to O streets, the valley to be open above O Street; and a fully open valley "with the proper arrangement of high-level and low-level roads and paths throughout the entire distance." Below L Street all alternatives would have an elevated boulevard connection with Potomac Park, and all would acquire and leave natural the valley above Massachusetts Avenue. [ 9 ]

Morrow and Markham favored the fully open valley, with a main drive along the creek and bordering roadways above on each side so the backs of buildings would not present themselves to view from within the park. They estimated the cost of this treatment between Massachusetts Avenue and L Street at $4,750,000--significantly less than the other choices. As part of the work they recommended preservation of the defunct Lyons Mill as a "historic structure"; a planned road bridge crossing the creek nearby would have a brick superstructure to match it. [ 10 ] The engineers sought to dispel the notion of rapid economic gain from a filled valley. Because the fill would take many years to subside and stabilize, "it is probable that a cheap character of building would ensue along this boulevard, rather than it would become the fine residential avenue that its cost and character should warrant." They continued:

The closed-conduit method of improvement, which would doubtless involve in it mere fill from eight to ten years, could therefore hardly meet the expectations of its supporters for a period of at least twenty to thirty years, if ever.

It is the apparent expectation of those interested in the closed treatment that the business interests of Georgetown would be vastly bettered thereby, and that a good class of residential construction would spread westward from Washington across the present site of the valley and, invading Georgetown, would finally eliminate the squalid settlements along the west side of Rock Creek below P street. This is very seriously doubted. [ 11 ]

Morrow and Markham urged prompt action on behalf of the open plan in view of the ongoing dumping in the valley. W. J. Douglas, the District bridge engineer, joined in their position and advocated assessing 20 per-cent of the total cost of the improvement against the abutting properties for the benefits accruing to them. [ 12 ]

There was no immediate action on the Morrow-Markham report, but establishment of the Commission of Fine Arts two years later gave new official voice to its recommendation and the similar previous one of the McMillan Commission. Sen. George Peabody Wetmore of Rhode Island, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Library, became personally interested in the lower valley. In February 1911 he introduced legislation for a park there that would contain the U.S. Botanic Garden, relocated from the west side of the Capitol. That March Wetmore conferred at length with Chairman Daniel H. Burnham of the Fine Arts Commission, and commission member Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., prepared for Wetmore a report on the area. Olmsted favored the parkway but opposed relocation of the Botanic Garden there, warning that "such use of the valley would offer a constant temptation to introduce greenhouses, working yards, experimental garden plots, and other conspicuously artificial features which would radically impair the character of the whole valley landscape as seen from the surrounding high level drives and viaducts." [ 13 ]

Wetmore reintroduced his bill, still containing the Botanic Garden provision and a $2,300,000 appropriation authorization, in the next Congress in May 1911. The Senate passed it in August. The House took no action, whereupon the Senate, in the final week before adjournment in February 1913, inserted the bill's language in an omnibus public buildings bill referred to it by the House. [ 14 ]

When the amended omnibus bill returned to the House after Senate passage, the House refused to concur in the Rock Creek provision. "That old crooked black snake proposition that has been before the House so often and always fails on its own merits was sneaked in here," charged Rep. Thetus W. Sims of Tennessee. When a conference committee was appointed to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate versions, the House conferees specified the Senate's Rock Creek amendment as one they would not accept. But Sen. George Sutherland of Utah, chairman of the Public Buildings and Grounds committee, regarded it as the most urgent of the items in contention because of rising land values. Sen. Elihu Root of New York stood fast with him, calling it "little less than criminal for us to go on without doing something like we have provided in this bill in regard to the treatment of lower Rock Creek, cesspool and pesthole as it is." [ 15 ]

On the penultimate day of the Congress, in the third conference on the bill, the conferees finally agreed on a modified version of the Rock Creek provision. Relocation of the Botanic Garden and a million dollars were cut out, but its substance stayed. Section 22 of the Public Buildings Act of March 4, 1913, in the form finally passed and approved by President William Howard Taft on his last morning in office, began as follows:

That for the purpose of preventing the pollution and obstruction of Rock Creek and of connecting Potomac Park with the Zoological Park and Rock Creek Park, a commission, to be composed of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of Agriculture, is hereby authorized and directed to acquire, by purchase, condemnation, or otherwise, such land and premises as are not now the property of the United States in the District of Columbia shown on the map on file in the office of the Engineer Commissioner of the District of Columbia, dated May seventeenth, nineteen hundred and eleven, and lying on both sides of Rock Creek, including such portion of the creek bed as may be in private ownership, between the Zoological Park and Potomac Park; and the sum of $1,300,000 is hereby authorized to be expended toward the requirement of such land. That all lands now belonging to the United States or to the District of Columbia lying within the exterior boundaries of the land to be acquired...are hereby appropriated to and made apart of the parkway herein authorized to be acquired. One-half of the cost of the said lands shall be reimbursed to the Treasury of the United States out of the revenues of the District of Columbia.... [ 16 ]

To carry out the actual work of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway Commission, the officer in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds was made its executive and disbursing officer. As will be recalled from the discussion of Rock Creek Park's management, the duties of this position fell in 1925 to the director of the new Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks of the National Capital. Once Rock Creek Park came under Public Buildings and Grounds in 1918, therefore, the park and parkway were administered by the same succession of engineer officers and staff.

In his capacity as executive and disbursing officer of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway Commission, Col. William W. Harts (Col. Clarence S. Ridley's predecessor as officer in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds) soon found that the boundary map referenced in the authorizing legislation was inadequate: its scale was too small and it had been drawn without regard to existing lot lines. If the commission were forced to acquire all land within its taking lines, the expense would far exceed the authorized appropriation. The commission chairman, Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, thereupon wrote the speaker of the House to request corrective legislation. The result was a $5,000 appropriation approved March 3, 1915, for the commission to survey the exact boundaries of the lands now desired and submit the resulting map to Congress. [ 17 ]

Landscape architect James D. Langdon and others on Colonel Harts' staff set to work. Their survey and comprehensive accompanying report were reviewed by Frederick Law Olmsted and approved by the Fine Arts Commission before the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway Commission transmitted them to Congress in February 1916. Because the battle to secure appropriations for land acquisition and development still lay ahead, the report devoted some attention to further justifying the project. Filling the 2-1/2-mile gap between the existing parkland to the north and south would permit a continuous drive of 14-1/2 miles, it declared, continuing:

It is true one may ride in the saddle or walk about half the way along a winding stream through an attractive valley, but the remainder of the valley in this intervening area is inaccessible even to pedestrians, its natural features having long since disappeared under great dumps of ashes and city refuse whose steep slopes descend precipitously to the stream's edge. To unaccompanied women and children the trip through the more accessible section of this valley is not altogether without drawbacks, for as these areas are largely private property effective policing is difficult [Between Land P streets] the natural features [have] been almost entirely eliminated by the dumping of refuse on the creek banks Where dumping has ceased the slopes are overgrown with tangles of bush and tree until they present a sordid and undesirable appearance. This condition has long militated against the occupancy of this region by any but the lowest type of population. [ 18 ]

The report detailed the newly proposed takings of property with respect to lot lines. The parkway commission sought to acquire 4,113,818 square feet assessed at $1,422,693 (as opposed to 5,989,581 square feet on the 1911 map assessed at $2,796,209). The greatest difficulties were forseen in connection with the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company and the Washington Gas Light Company, which held most of the valley below the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge. [ 19 ]

The eastern terminus of the C & O Canal entered Rock Creek on alignment with L Street and used the lower creek, raised by a dam at its mouth and diverted by a mole of stone and earth fill, as a barge basin and trans-shipment area. The canal company claimed perpetual rights to this portion of the creek and the adjoining land it had filled by virtue of its 1828 congressional charter. In discussions with the parkway commission, the company tentatively agreed to relinquish its rights and territory east of the proposed west boundary of the parkway if the government would quitclaim lands to the west used by the company and reroute the canal from the creek. Accordingly, the commission's plan showed the canal angling to the river just west of its existing first lift lock and running parallel to the creek through a new lift lock down to anew tide lock at the river. In conjunction with this reconfiguration, the creek itself would be shifted eastward below the former canal entry point. [ 20 ]

The gas company, with its tanks and other apparatus, was the dominant presence on the east side of the lower creek and along the adjoining Potomac riverfront. The commission proposed an exchange by which the company would cede its waterfront holdings for land farther inland, including In unneeded street right of way. Negotiations proceeded smoothly, and the exchange was concluded in September 1917. [ 21 ]

Congress accepted the parkway commission's survey and report and voted an initial $50,000 for land acquisition in fiscal year 1917. The commission began purchasing tracts in September 1916. By early 1923 it had acquired 82 percent of the authorized parkway. Finding that it could not obtain the balance by negotiation at reasonable cost, it asked the attorney general to condemn the remaining parcels south of M Street. [ 22 ]

The commission had reached a more serious impasse in its negotiations with the C & O Canal Company. By the Jurisdictional Act of April 27, 1912, the attorney general had been directed to file suit against the canal company and other parties claiming interest in lands and waters in, under, and adjacent to the Potomac and Anacostia rivers and Rock Creek to establish and clarify the government's title thereto. The suit against the canal company was shelved while the exchange negotiations held promise; but the company proved more demanding than expected. Negotiations were suspended during the war, then resumed, then suspended again upon the company's insistence that it receive fee simple title to the territory it would gain. At the commission's request, the Justice Department reactivated the suit in late 1923--the government claiming it owned the land wanted for the parkway because it had been made on the bed of a navigable stream, the company claiming ownership because Congress had granted it the use of Rock Creek for its canal. [ 23 ]

The government's hand was much strengthened by an otherwise calamitous natural occurrence: the Potomac flood of May 12-14, 1924. Canal navigation had been suspended by damage from many previous floods, but barge traffic and revenues had now dwindled to the point where it no longer paid to rebuild. The company initially insisted that navigation would resume, but as time passed without the necessary repairs, the Justice Department was able to argue for reversion of the company's rights to Rock Creek and the made land along it. In 1930 Lt. Col. U. S. Grant III, then the parkway commission's executive officer, formally requested the District assessor to transfer the made land from the company to the United States on his books. The still-pending title suit was finally settled, in the government's favor, in May 1933. [ 24 ]

The Justice Department moved slowly on the commission's 1923 request for condemnation of other parkway lands. The more time passed, the higher property values rose, rendering obsolete the commission's estimates in its 1916 report to Congress. The $1,300,000 authorized in the 1913 act was fully appropriated by 1925, and approximately 12 acres--including expensive tracts at Pennsylvania Avenue and M Street--remained to be bought. At the beginning of 1926 the commission was forced to draft and send to Congress a bill to authorize another $600,000 to complete acquisition. The bill had all funds coming from the Treasury, which gave congressmen from distant districts another opportunity to vociferously protest the taxing of their people for local improvements. The Senate sought to compromise with 50-50 cost sharing as in the original parkway authorization, but Rep. Thomas L. Blanton of Texas led House opponents in insisting on full funding from District revenues. On that basis the authorization was approved in May and the appropriation made two months later. [ 25 ]

Inevitably, the commission staff and influential outside parties occasionally found it desirable to amend the parkway boundaries set in 1916. Brig. Gen. S. T. Ansell, acting judge advocate general, and Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah lived near the Calvert Street crossing and wanted excluded tracts west of Ashmead Place and 20th Street purchased to protect their views. Smoot inserted a provision in a fiscal 1921 appropriations act directing addition of the land to the parkway. A smaller addition was ordered by a District appropriations act in 1923. [ 26 ]

In 1927 outside pressure was successfully exerted to have the commission sell back a portion of the parkway east of the creek at P Street for the Church of the Pilgrims. Rep. Fiorello H. LaGuardia of New York thought the sale might be detrimental to the park. "I think that is true," Rep. Edwin L. Davis of Tennessee replied, "but Colonel Grant says that it would be a proper thing to do." In fact, Grant had his own reservations, but he had evidently been made to overcome them in preparing and supporting the legislation ordering the sale. Passed and enacted J swiftly without further questions, it allowed the church to recover the land for the price the government had paid in 1924 and gave it a permanent access across parkway property. [ 27 ]

Two years later the commission obtained blanket authority to make minor adjustments in the boundaries of the parkway "by excluding therefrom and selling certain small areas, and including other limited areas, the net cost not to exceed the total sum already authorized for the entire project." Colonel Grant made the commission's case for this legislation in transmitting it to Congress:

While the bill does slightly increase the discretion of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway Commission, it will be advantageous both from the standpoint of economy and the standpoint of best park development. It will permit the commission to get better prices for the few parcels of land still to be bought, because now the owners stand out for a high price in some cases, feeling that the Government is committed to the purchase of the land and that they can prove a high price in court, while if the commission had the discretion given by this bill, it would be possible to tell the owners that their lands would not be purchased unless they would part with them at a more reasonable price.

The bill was enacted without opposition on March 2, 1929. [ 28 ] In the next two years under its authority, the commission acquired 33,642 square feet at Connecticut and Calvert streets and sold 41,932 square feet between P and Q streets.

There was continued frustration with the slow pace of the Justice Department in prosecuting the outstanding land condemnation cases and quiet title suits against other claimants. "[I]t is becoming harder and harder for me to explain to the Committees of Congress each year why this office does not gain possession of the property included in these projects, authorized by law 16 and 15 years ago, some of which acquisitions are absolutely essential to do the construction work proposed by the project," Grant complained to Attorney General William D. Mitchell on May 9, 1929. Justice was roused to action on the remaining seven percent of unacquired land, and by February 1931 the last 13 parcels to be condemned came to public ownership. [ 29 ]

The principal developed feature of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, synonymous with it in the public mind, would be the road through it. Segments of the road were under construction in the mid-1920s, but the title disputes and unacquired land prevented it from being made continuous.

The culvert and earth fill carrying Massachusetts Avenue across the valley constituted another obstacle to ideal parkway development. An attractive bridge there would be a great aesthetic improvement and open up the valley; it would also be costly. Lt. Col. Clarence O. Sherrill, the parkway commission's executive officer from 1921 to 1925, had a plan to promote the bridge. The commission would build a low road through the culvert that would be flooded over during high water periods. "The public will thus begin in a short while to realize the necessity of a handsome arch bridge and will accordingly support an appropriation for it," he wrote Charles Moore of the Fine Arts Commission in October 1925. [ 30 ]

Sherrill's strategy ultimately succeeded: the road through the culvert became the predicted bottleneck, and the District government built the present Massachusetts Avenue bridge to replace the culvert and fill in 1940-41.

With parkway development funds limited, it was necessary to resort to other temporary expedients on occasion. Where the road crossed the creek upstream from the Massachusetts Avenue culvert, the commission installed a bridge employing steel girders salvaged from the old Aqueduct Bridge across the Potomac, dismantled in 1926. [ 31 ] The lattice girders rose above the road surface between the two lanes as well as on each side and were not in keeping with other parkway construction. The bridge stood from 1927 to 1938-39, when it was replaced with the present stone-faced span.

In October 1931 the government reached an agreement with the C & O Canal Company that permitted construction of a planned creek crossing where the canal entered the creek. [ 32 ] Over the next two years the commission built the so-called L Street bridge there, not crossed by L Street but on its east-west alignment. (It was replaced in 1981-83 by the present bridge at that point.) Simultaneously under construction was the Waterside Drive overpass, carrying southbound traffic from Massachusetts Avenue across the northbound lane of the parkway road to its southbound lane. A tower containing a comfort station and a park police lodge was incorporated in the structure, which was completed in June 1932.

The last leg of the parkway road, between K and P streets, was opened to traffic in October 1935. The bridge crossing the creek just above P Street was not completed until June 1936; in the meantime, through parkway traffic crossed the creek there via the city's P Street overpass, using the parkway ramps at each end to leave and reenter the park road. With the completion of this segment, a park drive could be enjoyed from Potomac Park to the District line and beyond to East-West Highway in Montgomery County, Maryland.

One major aesthetic flaw remained to mar this extended park experience. At the critical confluence of Rock Creek and the Potomac River, the west bank of the creek was in commercial occupancy. Frederick Law Olmsted had written Charles Moore in 1925 about the problem this posed:

This land, held by the Canal Company and occupied in part by plants for handling gravel and sand, lies directly across the view to the Potomac and the Virginia shore just at the point where anyone driving southward in the parkway would otherwise have that view burst upon him on crossing K Street. I understand that the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway Commission found it impossible to deal with the Canal Company for this land on any reasonable basis....

The canal having been abandoned for navigation, there would be no point in carrying out the old plan in so far as it calls for separating the canal from the creek, but it would be worth a great deal to acquire the land about as far as a line drawn from 29th and K Streets to the south end of 30th Street at the River, in order to provide an unobstructed park foreground to the river view at the point where all the southbound users of the parkway will first become aware of that view and eager to enjoy it. Whether north bound or south bound, users of the parkway will make the transition in this locality from the open broad river bank scenery to the self-contained sylvan scenery of the creek valley or vice versa , and considering the strength and persistency of first impressions this is probably the worst place on the whole line to permit ugly commercial structures and uses to intrude conspicuously on the scenery of the parkway. [ 33 ]

The problem would persist until the mid-1980s, when a solution responding in good part to Olmsted's concern appeared imminent.

The Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway was not the first extension of Rock Creek Park. Nearly a decade before the parkway's authorization, moves were afoot to add the first of several tributary stream valleys to the park. The Piney Branch Parkway, extending along the eastern tributary of that name to the vicinity of 16th Street, was proposed in legislation prepared by the District commissioners and transmitted to Congress in November 1905. The resulting act, approved February 27, 1907, directed the commissioners to institute condemnation of land along the valley "not more than an average of four hundred feet in width" connecting 16th Street and Rock Creek Park. [ 34 ]

The land was acquired by October 1908, and the Rock Creek Park Board of Control designated it Biddle Parkway for Col. John Biddle, a former board secretary and District engineer commissioner. [ 35 ] The name did not adhere in common use, but the parkway grew in length and width under later legal authority. In the 1920s it was extended beyond 16th Street, and the road permitting traffic from adjoining Arkansas Avenue beneath the 16th Street bridge down the valley to Beach Drive was constructed. Land acquired on the north slope of the valley included the prehistoric Piney Branch Quarry, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Klingle Valley, running west from Rock Creek along the north side of the National Zoological Park, was another early object of acquisition interest. Congressional legislation was pending in 1912 to add a parkway strip along the existing Klingle Road from Rock Creek Park up to Woodley Road. In the early 1920s the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds was still pursuing this objective and was seeking a further extension to connect the proposed Klingle Valley Parkway with the Normanstone Parkway, running northwest above Massachusetts Avenue from the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. The connection would enable a parkway detour around the west side of the zoo, wanted because the road along Rock Creek through the zoo was closed at night and whenever water rose too high at the two fords within the zoo ground. [ 36 ] The Klingle Valley and Normanstone parkways ultimately came into being, their land acquisition continuing into the 1950s, but the connection between them never materialized.

In addition to serving for access routes into Rock Creek Park, these and other tributary park extensions were wanted to help preserve the Rock Creek watershed. Acquisition of the desired lands was a foremost purpose of the National Capital Park Commission, established by an act of Congress approved June 6, 1924, "to preserve the flow of water in Rock Creek, to prevent pollution of Rock Creek and the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, to preserve forests and natural scenery in and about Washington, and to provide for the comprehensive systematic, and continuous development of the park, parkway, and playground system of the National Capital." [ 37 ] The commission was composed of the chief of engineers of the U.S. Army, the engineer commissioner of the District of Columbia, the director of the National Park Service, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, the officer in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, and the chairmen of the House and Senate committees on the District of Columbia. The officer in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds (succeeded in 1925 by the director of the Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks of the National Capital) served as executive officer of the commission, in which capacity he oversaw its land acquisition program. Subsequent stream valley and other additions to Rock Creek Park in the District, including Melvin C. Hazen Park, Soapstone Valley Park, and Pinehurst Parkway, were purchased by the commission over the next three decades. A 1926 amendment to the act retitled the body the National Capital Park and Planning Commission and gave it the additional purpose of developing "a comprehensive, consistent, and coordinated plan for the National Capital and its environs in the States of Maryland and Virginia." [ 38 ]

This regional approach to parks and planning was motivated in part by awareness that Rock Creek and its parkland in the District would suffer increasing degredation if the creek and its watershed upstream in Maryland were not protected. In a 1913 paper on attractions around Washington, Lord Bryce, the British ambassador to the United States, had proposed park status for the upper valley on scenic and recreational grounds:

I should like to go even further [than the existing park]--although perhaps I am indulging in aspirations and not sufficiently thinking of appropriations--and consecrate the whole of Rock Creek valley for 10 or 12 miles above Washington to the public. It is a very beautiful valley Some day or other such a piece of scenery will be of infinite value to the people of Washington, who want to refresh their souls with the charms of Nature There are leafy glades where a man can go and lie down on abed of leaves and listen for hours to the birds singing and forget there is such a place as Washington and such a thing as politics within eight miles of him. [ 39 ]

In September 1925 Colonel Sherrill, as executive secretary of the National Capital Park Commission, wrote Gov. Albert C. Ritchie of Maryland to enlist his state's cooperation in park planning and acquisition for watershed protection as well as recreation. The governor agreed to appoint a committee to work with the commission. His appointees met the following May and named Maj. E. Brooke Lee, a prominent Montgomery County landowner and politician, as their chairman. In 1927 the Maryland legislature gave the committee legal status as the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.40 Along with other land planning and development responsibilities, the Maryland commission would both acquire and administer most parkland in Montgomery and Prince Georges counties, the jurisdictions bordering the District of Columbia.

To inspire the District's neighbors to substantive action, the carrot of federal aid was deemed necessary. Rep. Louis C. Cramton of Michigan, chairman of the House subcommittee dealing with park appropriations, introduced legislation in 1929 that would have the United States grant one third and advance two thirds of the cost of extensions of Rock Creek and Anacostia River parkland into Maryland. On the House floor that December, Cramton announced that the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission had made detailed plans for the Rock Creek Park extension in consultation with the National Capital Park and Planning Commission and was prepared to repay the federal advance. The House passed the bill, and it was referred to the Senate's Committee on the District of Columbia chaired by Sen. Arthur Capper of Kansas. [ 41 ]

Colonel Grant, now executive officer of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, worked closely with Cramton and Capper to resolve minor differences. As approved by the Senate and subsequently agreed to by the House, the bill specified a ceiling of $1,500,000 for the federal contribution and $3,000,000 more for the advance, to be repaid without interest in eight years. No appropriation would be made available until the two park and planning commissions had negotiated a satisfactory agreement on sewage disposal and storm water flow in the watersheds with the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, the bi-county sewer and water authority. The Capper-Cramton Act, as it was known, received President Herbert Hoover's signature on May 29, 1930. [ 42 ]

Conrad L. Wirth, a young landscape architect on the staff of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, worked with the Maryland commission and completed a report on the extended Rock Creek Park boundaries that September. The following August the commissions entered into the required sewage and storm water agreement, and the Maryland commission accelerated its extensive land acquisition program. It was already at work continuing Beach Drive 1.2 miles north to East-West Highway. The Maryland portion of Rock Creek Park would ultimately reach upstream 22 miles from the District line and encompass 4,193 acres, as compared to 1,754 acres in the District portion. [ 43 ] Its separate administration would not be perceptible to most users entering and continuing along Beach Drive or a hiking or horse trail, and it would closely complement the federal park.

Two significant tracts in Georgetown might be considered additions to the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, except that one predates it as parkland. Montrose Park, occupying some 16 acres at 30th and R streets, owes its existence to a 1911 District appropriations act provision directing its purchase and inclusion in the District park system. [ 44 ] The force behind the legislation was Sarah Louise Rittenhouse, a Georgetown citizen determined to save the land from commercial development. The park became contiguous to the parkway when the land for the latter was acquired in the valley below. Adjoining Montrose Park on the northwest is Dumbarton Oaks Park, which Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss deeded to the government in 1940 when they gave the main portion of their Georgetown estate to Harvard. It comprises 27 acres of wooded land with a stream valley descending to Rock Creek. Both parks afford convenient access to parkway trails from upper Georgetown.

Until the 1933 reorganization the National Park Service managed mostly western wilderness. City parks--even large natural city parks--were alien to its agenda. Although Horace Albright and his successors appreciated the visibility and political value their bureau derived from administering the National Capital Parks, many if not most of their staff did not regard this urban inheritance as "real Park Service." A dichotomy between the National Park Service and the National Capital Parks persists to the present in the minds of many Service traditionalists.

Rock Creek Park was more like the Service's traditional areas than were other elements of National Capital Parks. This resemblance did not shield it from internal criticism, however. In June 1934 Malcolm Kirkpatrick, a landscape architect in the Service's Branch of Plans and Design, prepared a 16-page report titled "What Is Wrong With Rock Creek Park." He termed his critique a supplement to the Olmsted Report of 1918.

Kirkpatrick complained of the park's deteriorated woodlands from unchecked weed and seedling growth and a failure to remove dead timber (revealing a management orientation not shared by all). He noted the erratic flow of the creek from its use as a storm sewer, causing under-cutting of banks and deposition of sand and silt. "The automobile can be designated as one of the greatest detriments to the enjoyment of Rock Creek Park today; that is, Rock Creek Park as it is equipped to handle the burden of traffic upon it," he wrote; to alleviate the situation he suggested augmenting the creek fords with bridges. [ 4 ]

Kirkpatrick was offended by the aesthetics of previous park development. The rustic signs were "'rustic' in the worst sense of that word which implies apparently that to conform to natural surroundings, objects of wood must ape the growing tree. This is an absurd notion that yields absurd results." Toilet buildings and shelters were "drab and uninteresting." Existing road bridges represented "a fairly thorough cross-section of bad architectural and structural design."

"Thus to the National Park Service has come a heritage wealthy only in its possibilities...," he concluded. "Once a program is formulated, a rigid system of control must be inaugurated so that every step taken shall be in the direction of the established objective and within the bounds of good taste and common sense. No more of this haphazard freedom for subordinate field foremen." [ 5 ]

Dr. E. P. Meinecke, a natural scientist on the Service staff, recorded his views on Rock Creek Park at the same time:

The strongest impression I get is that of disappointment. I have every reason to expect, in a large city, the capital of the Nation, a Park representing that which is best in American landscape art, designed to serve a large and growing number of its inhabitants as a place of recreation and refuge from the turmoil and heat of the city. I find instead a curious mixture of more or less futile attempts at landscaping and of wild or rather unkempt growth, haphazardly developed, of amateurish attempts at embellishment side by side with crudest neglect. [ 6 ]

Meinecke found too much cleaning of the forest floor in heavily used areas, tending to soil erosion. Like Kirkpatrick, he commented on the scouring and undercutting of the creek banks from unregulated stream flow. "There is at present, little pleasure to be gained from visiting the creek itself," he wrote. "The water is dirty and the smell of decaying filth is anything but agreeable." He attributed much of this problem to an inadequate storm sewer gate in Piney Branch, which in heavy rain let raw sewage into the stream. [ 7 ]

The primary feature of Rock Creek Park--the creek itself--had been sullied for some time by its urban and suburban surroundings. In 1922 designated children's bathing places were identified as subject to very high fecal contamination, traced to sewage from Bethesda and Kensington, Maryland. The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission could not correct the problem until the District of Columbia completed its interceptor sewer, to which the suburban sewerage would connect. The Army Medical Corps operated clorination plants above the bathing areas, but their efficacy in the running stream could not be assured. Bathing had to be suspended. [ 8 ]

As related in the last chapter, the volume of stream flow had also become a matter of increasing concern in the 1920s. In his capacity as executive secretary of the National Capital Park Commission, U. S. Grant III asked the U.S. Geological Survey in 1926 to monitor the flow in the Rock Creek basin. Funds were not immediately available to establish gauging stations, but A. H. Horton of the Survey arranged for the monitoring beginning in 1929. "The flowing water in Rock Creek is one of the chief attractions of the park," he wrote Grant. "[I]f the developments in the basin of the creek are affecting the amount of water in the creek I believe it would be desirable to obtain data which will indicate how serious the situation is and whether the effect on the flow of the creek is increasing year by year." Two years later the National Capital Park and Planning Commission considered a proposal to raise the Potomac River dam above Great Falls so that the impounded water could be gravity-fed to the Rock Creek valley through a conduit to augment the creek flow during dry periods. Grant determined that the scheme would be very costly, and it was not pursued. [ 9 ]

Government facilities were among the sources of creek pollution in the early 1930s. The Walter Reed Army Hospital on upper 16th Street discharged sewage into Rock Creek, and the National Bureau of Standards on Connecticut Avenue disposed of large quantities of chemicals in the tributary running past its property. In 1934 the National Park Service received a $25,000 allotment from the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works to study and plan for the elimination of pollution in Rock Creek and its tributaries. The resulting report declared the major problem to be the combined sanitary and storm sewers serving some 160,000 people in the District portion of the watershed: the intercepting sewers became overcharged during rains and spilled their contents into the creek. Separate systems would be needed--and they would be costly. [ 10 ]

The situation had not greatly improved by 1954, when an article titled "Our Capital's Rock Creek Mess" appeared in American Forests . "It is hard to believe that the foul-smelling, mud-laden, debris-choked water-course which winds its sickly way from Montgomery County, Maryland, through the nation's capital can be the same stream which Major Michler described...some 90 years ago," wrote its author, Bernard Frank of the U.S. Forest Service. Frank deplored the overdevelopment of the watershed with inadequate storm water and sewage controls and called for strict measures to prevent erosion during land development. [ 11 ]

In 1967 an Interior Department publication, The Creek and the City: Urban Pressures on a Natural Stream; Rock Creek Park and Metropolitan Washington , was able to report some progress. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration had conducted detailed studies to monitor water quality in the creek. Two dams had recently been built upstream in Montgomery County under the Soil Conservation Service; Lakes Needwood and Frank (for the deceased Bernard Frank) behind them would collect silt and curb flood damage downstream during their expected 50-year lifespans. Montgomery County had adopted new grading and sediment controls for land development. Some defective sewers in Washington had been repaired, and the National Zoo had initiated a major program to halt the discharge of animal wastes into the creek. The report advocated stronger enforcement of existing anti-siltage and pollution measures and greater efforts to continuously remove trash and other debris from the stream.

In the mid-1980s there is still some pollution from combined sewers in times of prolonged rainfall, but most is from non-point sources--general street runoff. With the heavy development in the watershed accelerating runoff, the creek flow is more erratic than ever. Neither problem is readily solvable. [ 12 ]

The urban environs of Rock Creek Park presented other challenges unfamiliar to Park Service managers in their accustomed habitat. Most park users were local, and many used the park in ways that visitors to most other national parklands did not. Some of these uses were judged incompatible with the higher values for which the park had been set aside.

In 1936 Russell T. Edwards of the American Nature Association complained that the park had been converted to "an outdoor garage for the automobile washing industry." Evidently a traditionalist in matters of dress, Edwards was scandalized by the dishabille of the participants. "With a background of still reflecting waters with ducks and geese paddling idly about," he wrote, "you will find women in Mother Hubbards or nightgowns, I wouldn't know which, washing automobiles aided by, I presume, their husbands, stripped to the shirt and less." Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes agreed that the activity was unseemly and announced plans to forbid car washing--a prohibition not consistently enforced. [ 13 ]

Unfortunately, there were more serious offenses to occupy the attention of the U.S. Park Police, established under the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds in 1919 and inherited by the Park Service with National Capital Parks in 1933. "Residents describe the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway section between Taft Bridge and Calvert Street Bridge, particularly the south slope behind the Edgewater Riding Academy, as a 'jungle'--a habitat of unsavory characters, perverts, and delinquents," Assistant Regional Director Nash Castro advised the force in 1962. He ordered heightened surveillance of the area. [ 14 ] Surveillance would never be sufficient to thwart all evil-doing in the park, however.

Beginning in the late 1960s, the Park Service made a more concerted effort to bring "parks to the people"--particularly urban parks to inner-city populations. The National Capital Region sponsored "Summer in the Parks" and "Parks for All Seasons" programs aimed at black youth and others who had been little drawn to the traditional park values and activities. Amplified popular music concerts were prominent features of the new programs. Some were held in Rock Creek Park, but when park neighbors complained of the noise and "undesirable elements" attracted, most such programs there (outside the Carter Barron Amphitheater) were discontinued.

In 1972 a Washingtonian magazine article summarized the stresses and contradictions stemming from Rock Creek Park's urban situation:

It is thought to be the largest urban park in the country, perhaps in the world, yet it is very hard to get into. It is a wilderness preserve largely untrammeled by man, but the polluted stream, that flows through it is dangerous to touch. It has the potential to bring people together in enjoyment and relaxation, but it is a physical barrier four miles long and one mile wide separating the haves [west of the park] from the have-nots [east of the park] in an already divided city. It is without peer as a living example of our heritage from prehistoric ages to colonial times to the present, yet the majority of those who use it are commuters who never leave their cars. [ 15 ]

The greatest urban impact on Rock Creek Park and the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway was and is automobile traffic. Although virtually all national parklands felt the heavy influence of the automobile, few were so dominated by it.

Automobiles could not be accused of intruding in the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, which was intended from its inception to accommodate them. "The road in the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway section is designed for high speed traffic as far north as Cathedral Avenue," reported Thomas C. Jeffers, a National Capital Park and Planning Commission landscape architect, in 1934. "Its real purpose is to provide a pleasant and speedy way of travel between Potomac Park and Rock Creek Park." Jeffers contrasted it with Beach Drive and the link through the zoo, which he declared must remain low speed and unstraightened. [ 16 ]

Upon completion of the parkway road in June 1936, Chairman Frederic A. Delano of the Park and Planning Commission suggested alternating one-way traffic south and north for morning and evening commuters respectively. This pattern was inaugurated in May 1937 and became a permanent feature of the parkway, reinforcing its status as a commuter route. [ 17 ]Among the regular parkway commuters during the first decade was Secretary Ickes, who in the early 1940s requested weekly park police reports on violators of the one-way traffic regulation and personally recorded the license numbers of offenders he spotted.

The completion and heavy use of the parkway road created new pressures on the valley road to the north. The link from the upper end of the parkway through the zoo to Rock Creek Park proper, built in the 1920s, was a major impediment to through traffic. It wound sharply along an S-curve of the creek and traversed two fords, which caused closure of the road during high water.

In 1933, even before the parkway road was finished, highway improvement advocates in the city were favoring construction of a road tunnel beneath a portion of the zoo to straighten the link. The Smithsonian Institution, which administered the zoo and the road segment through it, opposed the tunnel. So did the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which thought it would violate the park character of the road. But the highway interests, generally supported by the District of Columbia Board of Commissioners, persisted and broadened their vision. In 1938 Commissioner Melvin C. Hazen proposed extension of a double traffic artery through the zoo and north through the Rock Creek valley to East-West Highway in Maryland--a scheme opposed by the Evening Star newspaper as "about the worst thing that could happen to Rock Creek Park." [ 18 ]

Prompted by the District commissioners, Congress in the fiscal 1940 District appropriations act ordered planning for "additional highway and parkway facilities in the vicinity of, into and through Rock Creek Park, Rock Creek and Potomac connecting Parkway and National Zoological Park." But the National Capital Park and Planning Commission and the National Park Service, essential parties to the planning, succeeded installing action until 1942, when World War II shifted federal priorities and the through highway scheme was shelved. [ 19 ]

The zoo road became a live issue again in 1954, with the National Park Service and National Capital Planning Commission (as it was retitled in 1952) now eager to improve that segment. The Service advocated twin two-lane tunnels through the hill around which the downstream bend of the creek flowed through the zoo, with a bridge over the creek below the south portals. The Smithsonian was still reluctant and deflected Service requests for permission to start surveying and test boring for the tunnels. "This matter has been very carefully discussed in our offices, and I am afraid that it is the unanimous opinion here that it would be disadvantageous for the National Zoological Park to have the road you describe cut through its property...," Secretary Leonard Carmichael wrote Director Conrad L. Wirth in February 1957. "It is our considered opinion that an arterial type road cutting through this property would seriously interfere with the basic recreational and scientific functions of the Zoological Park." [ 20 ]

In a peremptory reply to Carmichael, Wirth spelled out the legislative intent of Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway as connecting Potomac Park and Rock Creek Park and virtually demanded a transfer of zoo land to the Service for the purpose. Unintimidated, Carmichael replied that much more time would be needed for the Smithsonian's lawyers and board of regents to consider the matter. The Service then took a more conciliatory approach, wooing Dr. Theodore H. Reed, the zoo director, with master planning assistance. In a 1959 letter to Carmichael, Wirth was deferential, promising to hold the new zoo road to two lanes and offering to allow the Smithsonian to choose its alignment. Carmichael finally authorized the survey and borings, and in March 1960 he announced the Smithsonian's approval of plans prepared by the Service and Bureau of Public Roads. The two-lane road would tunnel through "Administration Hill" and follow the east side of Rock Creek to Klingle Road; the zoo land north of the tunnel and east of the road would be transferred to the Service; and the Service, would build a parking lot for the zoo near the Harvard Street entrance, and a bridge to carry Harvard Street traffic across the parkway. [ 21 ]

After further design work, a contract for $1,536,584 was let to A. S. Wilkerstrom, Inc., of Skaneateles, New York, in June 1962. The tunnel and new road segment, eliminating the two fords, opened to traffic in the fall of 1966.

The improvement, so long advocated by the Park Service, proved a mixed blessing. The parkway below carried more northbound rush-hour traffic wanting to use the single northbound lane of the new road through the tunnel than it could accommodate, leading to long backups on the parkway. Pressures mounted to extend one-way northbound traffic to Klingle Street--but that would only relocate the bottleneck and clog both lanes of the tunnel, blocking it to emergency vehicles and creating possible hazards from exhaust fumes.

By the 1970s the Service realized the futility of parkway improvements to lessen traffic congestion: more lanes and fewer impediments only served to attract more traffic, with increasingly evident degradation of park values. In a 1977 planning document on Rock Creek Park the Service reviewed its past actions with regret: "[T]he conversion of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway to exclusive use by one-way traffic during 85 morning and evening rush periods and the provision of first priority maintenance of an excellent road net directly encourage excessive commuter traffic Construction of a tunnel on roadway near the National Zoo represents inappropriate development since it directly encourages adverse increased commuter use of park roads." [ 22 ] Such are the insights of hind-sight!

The Service's position on the proposed four-lane arterial highway to Maryland has better stood the test of time. As advanced by Commissioner Hazen in 1938, the highway would pass through the zoo and the lower part of Rock Creek Park, extend north along the east side of Broad Branch Road to Military Road, then use Oregon Avenue widened on the park side to connect with a widened Beach Drive in Maryland. In delaying action on the proposal, the Service cited the 1918 Olmsted Report to buttress its view that no major roadway should occupy the narrow winding floor or steep wooded hillsides of the valley above the zoo (although certain crossings would be appropriate). [ 23 ]

The war sidelined but did not bury the highway plan, which reappeared in the Recommended Highway Improvement Program presented by the Regional Highway Planning Committee in 1952. The arterial along and through Rock Creek Park was now to be a link connecting U.S. Route 240 (present Interstate 270) in Maryland with downtown Washington. Proponents of the plan, including the District commissioners, argued that only a small part of the park--the most densely wooded and least used part--would be affected. They were joined in Maryland by the State Roads Commission and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which was prepared to allow use of Maryland's Rock Creek Park for the highway and for a segment of what would become the Capital Beltway. [ 24 ]

The National Park Service resumed its opposition. It was aided by a group of Chevy Chase, Maryland, residents led by Gerald P. Nye, a former senator from North Dakota, who would be disturbed by a leg of the highway displacing or passing near their homes. In June 1953 Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay wrote Nye, "[T]he Department of the Interior will vigorously oppose any use of the Rock Creek Valley for arterial highway purposes or any other use contrary to the intent of Congress in the establishment of this important park area." [ 25 ] Park Service Director Conrad Wirth represented Interior on the National Capital Planning Commission, which would have to approve highway construction in the Maryland parkland acquired with federal funds under the Capper-Cramton Act. The commission opposed the highway down Rock Creek Park in the District, but it overrode Wirth's objections and allowed the Capital Beltway to pass through a portion of the park in Maryland.

In January 1955 the Service drafted legislation, introduced by Chairman James E. Murray of the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs committee, that would require the National Capital Planning Commission to rescind its permission for the beltway leg, restrict its approval of subsequent roads in the Maryland park, and proscribe additional roads in the District park without specific congressional approval. The bill won support from retired congressman Louis C. Cramton, Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant III (now president of the American Planning and Civic Association), and an array of civic and conservation organizations. It was opposed by the Bureau of the Budget, which thought it unnecessary in view of existing protections; by Maryland politicians and officials, to whom it represented unwarranted r federal interference in state affairs; and by the Washington Post , which editorialized, "[N]o assurance can be given that the enormous increase in traffic from Montgomery County into the District can be handled without an expressway along the edge of Rock Creek Park some time in the future." [ 26 ]

The highway issue was thoroughly ventilated in a Senate hearing on the bill, which was not brought to a vote in either house then or following its reintroduction in the next Congress. Planning for the beltway leg in Maryland proceeded amid state assurances that it would be a low-speed "parkway" from which commercial traffic would be forever barred--assurances that were forgotten when the beltway was completed in the mid-1960s and became part of the interstate highway system. But opposition to bringing U.S. 240 into the District via Rock Creek Park spread and solidified. When District and Maryland highway interests revived the scheme in 1957, the Washington Post admitted past error and declared, "This would be intolerable, and Washingtonians who love their park had better rise up and block any such encroachment." (At the same time, it favored an alternate route through Glover-Archbold Park as "the least disadvantageous course," because "unquestionably a connection with U.S. 240 must be provided.") Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton solicited statements from District Commissioner Robert E. McLaughlin, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, and Gov. Theodore H. McKeldin of Maryland that they shared his strong objection to a Rock Creek highway; only McKeldin declined to join in. [ 27 ]

Some skirmishing continued (highway dragons being notoriously difficult to slay). A 1958 Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission staff re,port on alternative extensions of U.S. 240 explicitly ruled out Rock Creek Park based on Interior-Park Service and conservationist opposition. A year later, however, the Maryland commission and the Montgomery County Planning Board resolved to restudy a route using the park. Once again Director Wirth made clear the Service position, with evident success--for a time. [ 28 ]

The next and last serious challenge came in 1966. The Lands Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the National Capital Regional Planning Council, an affiliate of the National Capital Planning Commission, proposed a new feasibility study of a highway route along the western edge of Rock Creek Park south to Tilden Street, where it would cross to the east side and join the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway below the zoo. The Evening Star endorsed the plan, characterizing opposition to the earlier proposals as emotional and predicting that this route would "emerge as the most reasonable, logical solution" to the need for a northwestern freeway connection. [ 29 ]

By this time, however, longstanding assumptions about the need for such a connection--somewhere--were being challenged by other visions. From them sprang the planning and construction of Metro, metropolitan Washington's rapid rail transit system, in the next two decades. The massive governmental commitment to Metro rendered most freeway proposals obsolete, that for Rock Creek Park among them. The park would likely have been spared without the subway, so entrenched were its defenders; but if the highway plan were finally dead, Metro entombed it.

The 1960s saw a resurgence in the popularity of the bicycle as a mode of transportation and recreation for adults as well as children. Rock Creek Park made its first special effort to accommodate cyclists early in that decade, when Ross Drive was occasionally reserved for their use. In 1966 the section of Beach Drive from Joyce Road to Broad Branch Road was first limited to bicycle and pedestrian traffic on Sunday mornings. By that fall about three and a half miles of trail north of the Nature Center had been bluestone-surfaced for bicycle use. In the following years the Beach Drive automobile closure was extended to Morrow Drive, and the bicycle trail was extended.

These initial efforts were not altogether successful. The trail was overly steep in places, and the surface was not stable enough for thin tires. Bicycle use on the closed roads did not appear sufficient to justify their closure, and motorists complained. They also objected to sharing roads simultaneously with cyclists, who tended to hold up traffic. [ 30 ]

Cyclists made rapid gains in number and influence, however. In September 1971 they prevailed upon the Park Service to set aside one lane, of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway north of Virginia Avenue for a week o promote commuting by bicycle in lieu of automobiles. The experiment, was well publicized and enjoyed a good response from cyclists, but its positive aspects were overshadowed by massive traffic tieups with severe inconvenience to the great majority of parkway users unable or unwilling to shift to bicycles. The political impossibility of continuing the lane closure--the goal of the bicycle lobby--was quickly apparent. The Service compromised by paving over the existing bridle trail between Connecticut and Virginia avenues for bicycle use; the crash project was completed by the following week.

During the 1970s good paved bicycle trails were completed north along Beach Drive to Broad Branch Road and from Joyce Road north to near the Maryland line. The missing link was the stretch from Broad Branch to Joyce roads. Beach Drive between those points continued to be closed to auto traffic during weekend hours, when commuters did not rely heavily on it; but when motorists and cyclists coexisted on the narrow, winding road, the association was unpleasant for both.

In its Statement for Management on Rock Creek Park prepared in 1977, the Service listed as an objective "To improve the quality of the visitor's experience by reducing excessive automobile commuter traffic on roads within Rock Creek Park, and encourage the shift of such traffic to mass transit, bicycle, and other more appropriate forms of transportation." In line with this objective, the Service in 1980 studied nine alternatives for completing the bicycle system. At one end of the spectrum, 5-1/2 miles of new bicycle trail paralleling Beach Drive would be built, entailing no effect on auto traffic. At the other end, major segments of Beach Drive would be permanently converted to bicycle use only, eliminating it as a through route for automobiles. [ 31 ] Michael A. Replogle, an engineer with transportation experience, advanced a tenth alternative in March 1981 on behalf of the People's Alliance for Rock Creek Park (PARC), an outside group. His plan would permanently close Beach Drive to through auto traffic both above and below Joyce Road as soon as the Metro subway system was opened to the Van Ness station on Connecticut Avenue.

In March 1983 the Service advanced a three-phase solution largely endorsed by PARC. Portions of Beach Drive above Joyce Road would be closed to cars on weekends and holidays during the warm months. One lane of Beach Drive south to Broad Branch Road would be reserved for cyclists and joggers during weekday rush hours, allowing cars the other lane in the prevailing rush hour direction. After 1985, when the Red Line of Metro was to be completed beyond Van Ness and reconstruction work on 16th Street was to be finished, a gate would be placed near Boulder Bridge permanently barring that section of Beach Drive to automobiles.

Three months later, however, the Service disappointed the bicycle forces and others interested in curtailing auto traffic by a change of position. It confirmed the weekend closings on upper Beach Drive between Picnic Area 10 and Wise Road and between West Beach Drive and the Maryland line--measures previously tried with good results. But it would not interfere with weekday traffic below Joyce Road. Instead, it would build a 2.5-mile bicycle trail paralleling that segment of Beach Drive down to Broad Branch Road. [ 32 ]

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association called the decision a "shocking turnaround" and "a totally inadequate response to the problem of high-volume, high speed auto commuter traffic in this magnificent national park." The National Parks and Conservation Association was equally critical. "Caving in to pressure from automobile commuters and some city officials, Manus Fish, NPS director of the National Capital Region, announced that a three-year planning effort would be disregarded, and he offered a new bike path instead," it reported in its National Parks magazine. "Because construction of a paved path through the narrow valley would disrupt the site and--most important--would do nothing to alleviate traffic problems, NPCA is opposed to the plan." [ 33 ]

The opposition to the new bicycle path, together with its cost, dimmed the likelihood of its early construction. At this writing the closings on upper Beach Drive are in effect on weekends during daylight savings time, and the drive between Joyce and Broad Branch roads is barred to automobiles on weekends year round. Further measures to curb auto traffic in favor of bicycles do not appear imminent. [ 34 ]

Rock Creek Park is an island of nature surrounded by human development. The park's forests, meadows, and streams are home to many plants and animals . One special animal is the endangered Hay's spring amphipod, a tiny crustacean that lives in the water. Rock Creek Park is also an important area for migrating birds. These natural wonders make the park a place to enjoy again and again.

But Rock Creek Park faces many environmental challenges. Invasive, non-native plants crowd out native plants. Stormwater runoff pollutes waterways. White-tailed deer populations require management to keep the ecosystem in balance. Climate change threatens the park's health. Read on to learn about the park's natural features and how the National Park Service studies and protects this special place.

How National Parks in urban settings provide valuable refuges to wildlife: from water birds at Boston Harbor Islands to threatened bats at Rock Creek Park, and the contributions that monitoring by citizen scientists and NPS employees make to preserving them.

Found in low-lying areas with moist, fertile soils, this type of forest is the most diverse in the park. Look for large-diameter tulip trees, sugar maples, mayapples, and paw paws.

Found on hilltops with poorer soil, this type of forest has abundant chestnut oak trees and a blanket of mountain laurel on the forest floor.

Generally found on flat or rolling areas on the east side of the park, this type of forest is a mixture of oak trees. These areas were largely cleared during the Civil War era.

The most common type of plant community in the park, sandwiched between the most- and least-fertile soils in the park on moderate slopes, this forest is made of American beech, oak, and tulip trees.

White, black, scarlet, and chestnut oak dominate the canopy while a sparse understory of low-growing hillside blueberry and black huckleberry bushes may be found on the forest floor.

Found on rocky hilltops with poor, acidic soil, this plant community has a distinctive look of evergreen mountain laurel shrubs under a canopy of oak and American beech.

Fed by groundwater at the base of slopes, this wet and muddy environment is where you can find the distinctive skunk cabbage.

On floodplains adjacent to the creek, it takes trees and plants tolerant to occasional flooding to survive here. Tulip trees, sycamore, box-elder, river birch, green ash, and American elm thrive in these areas.

NPS Photo How to have a safe hike in Rock Creek Park Bring and use a map or guide. Don't rely on trail signs, as there are not many in the park. Stay hydrated—bring and drink water. Stay on the trail to avoid poison ivy, snakes, and ticks. Keep your dog leashed at all times to protect both your pet and park wildlife. Many hikers and park users are afraid of dogs; please be respectful of them. Dress appropriately. Wear sturdy shoes, dress in layers and anticipate cold and wet weather. Before you go, review how to Recreate Responsibly .

A Rock Creek Park ranger starts a hike at the Rock Creek Park Nature Center. NPS/ K. Cain Create your own hike! There are two primary trails that run north-south in Rock Creek Park. They are the Western Ridge Trail (green on the park map) and the Valley Trail (orange on the park map). Think of them as the sides of a ladder.

There are many connector trails running mostly east-west joining the Western Ridge Trail with the Valley Trail. Think of these connectors as the rungs of a ladder. Using this principle, it is possible to create an almost infinite number of loops in varrying lengths from about 1-mile to 10-miles. Below is a link to the full park map. Favorite places to start a hike: Nature Center Peirce Mill Picnic areas 6-10 Boundary Bridge Full Park Map

There are two primary trails that run north-south in Rock Creek Park. They are the Western Ridge Trail (green on the park map) and the Valley Trail (orange on the park map). Think of them as the sides of a ladder. There are many connector trails running mostly east-west joining the Western Ridge Trail with the Valley Trail. Think of these connectors as the rungs of a ladder. Using this principle, it is possible to create an almost infinite number of loops in varrying lengths from about 1-mile to 10-miles. Below is a link to the full park map.

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