The Region United by the Anacostia Watershed
Covering 176 square miles of the District of Columbia, Prince George’s County and Montgomery County in Maryland, and home to over 1 million people, the Anacostia River and its watershed are recovering from centuries of habitat loss and pollution to become an urban oasis in the heart of the National Capitol Area.
History
For thousands of years before European explorers and settlers sailed up the Anacostia, Native nations hunted and farmed along its shores and feasted on the bounty of fish and plants they found in the river and its wetlands. In 1608, when Captain John Smith sailed up the Potomac and into the Anacostia, he marveled at its depth, clarity, and abundance.
As Smith recorded in his journal, the Indigenous people he found living at the mouth of the river were traders, and the name he recorded for them on his 1612 map was “Nacotchtanck.” The origin of this word is unclear. The Native word for trade is “anaquash”, and town/village is “tanik”. In the 1600s, “Anaquashtanik” was commonly used for the Native nation. Over the years that name gave us the names which we use today – “Anacostan” for the nation, and “Anacostia” for the DC neighborhood and the river.
Life got hard for the Anacostans in the 17th century, their location was choice for trade, but was also vulnerable to attack by other Native tribes from the north. The European settlers brought new diseases, which afflicted Natives throughout the Chesapeake. The settlers also competed as traders, weakening the traditional source of the Anacostan’s wealth.Tribal and settler conflicts also cost them lives. In the 1660s, hard times caused the Anacostan chief to leave his tribal homestead, which was located where the Joint Anacostia-Bolling Base now sits. Not long after, the Anacostan band dispersed, but its legacy lives on in the modern Piscataway Conoy tribe. That land and much of the shoreline upriver on the Anacostia was cleared for tobacco farming by the settlers, and that loss of land cover that held the soil in place caused tons of sediment to pour into the river with each rainfall. (For more information about local indigenous history, visit DC Native History Project).
The selection of the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers as the site of the new nation’s capital city of Washington, DC spurred rapid population growth, development, and industrialization along both rivers. This brought with it pollution from raw sewage and industrial waste and chemicals dumped directly into the Anacostia, where some was carried away, but much simply sank and accumulated in the riverbed.
In the 18th century, the Port of Bladensburg served as a major center for colonial shipping. The Anacostia River was 40 feet deep and able to accommodate ocean going ships, though that did not last. The tremendous inflow of sediment described above quickly filled the river, and by 1840 Bladensburg was inaccessible to large ships. The 19th century’s major industrial activity, including ship building and ammunition manufacture at the Washington Navy Yard and coal gasification further upriver, supported a vibrant economy, but also contributed to the destruction of wetlands and the pollution that we still battle today.
Development along the river led to the destruction of the forests, meadows and wetlands that make for a healthy watershed. As run-off and sediment clogged the river and reduced its depth, and as the population living near the river increased, flooding became a serious problem. In what we now recognize as counterproductive approaches, the Army Corps of Engineers built a series of levees and seawalls designed to control flooding and straighten the river, cutting it off from its floodplain and further degrading the natural systems of the Anacostia.
By the mid-20th century all these mounting environmental assaults – habitat loss and pollution from sediment, sewage, industrial pollutants, and trash – had conspired to drive the Anacostia River ecosystem to near extinction. It was recognized as one of the most polluted rivers in the United States. As economic conditions, discriminatory government policies, and ill-considered “urban renewal” initiatives pushed much of Washington’s Black population into the city’s southeastern wards, the deteriorating river and the freeway built alongside it formed symbolic and literal barriers between the largely Black communities east of the river and the rest of the city. Ever since, the health and welfare of folks east of the Anacostia River has lagged far behind the rest of the city.
In 1989, the Anacostia Watershed Society was founded with the mission to protect and restore the Anacostia River and its watershed for the benefit of all who live here and for future generations. Since then, we have partnered with community activists, non-profit organizations, and governments at all levels to curb pollution, restore habitat and wildlife, and provide educational, recreational, and volunteer opportunities to adults and youth.
Nature
Despite centuries of development and pollution, and due largely to the efforts of AWS and partners, the Anacostia River watershed remains a remarkably rich natural area. Poor water quality is still a serious issue, but it has improved substantially over the last 20 years, evidenced both by monitoring data and by wildlife such as osprey and river otters returning to the river. A recent inventory of species, called a BioBlitz, counted 1,068 unique species, including rare and endangered species, birds, fish, mammals, amphibians, insects, aquatic invertebrates, and many more. Journey along the river and you might see bald eagles, beavers, ospreys, cormorants, white perch, striped bass, crayfish, herons, turtles, egrets, red fox, shad, kingfishers, catfish, and freshwater mussels.
After years of effort, habitats in the watershed are also slowly recovering. For example, stands of wild rice, a keystone wetland plant, are reappearing after vanishing almost completely. Reforestation efforts are bringing back the riparian forest, and decades of wetlands restoration projects, still ongoing, are recovering some of the rich habitat areas that so thrilled Captain Smith’s expedition. Today, as one moves upriver past the Navy Yard and Anacostia Park, the river becomes increasingly wild, and you can travel several miles forgetting you’re in the heart of an urban landscape.
In the upper watershed, tributaries with colorful names like Quincy Run, Sligo Creek, Little Paint Branch, and Beaverdam Creek wind their way through Montgomery County and Prince George’s County in Maryland, habitat for migratory eels, shad, herring, and sea lampreys and wonderfully named small fish like killifish, pumpkinseeds, and mummichogs.Beyond the banks of the river, freshwater habitats including small streams, seepage swamps,and vernal pools each have their own particular assemblages of plants, fish, and wildlife. Many species, such as marbled salamanders, wood frogs, and fairy shrimp, can thrive only in these isolated habitats.
Despite the many environmental challenges facing the Anacostia watershed, it continues to be a home to natural wonders.
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