Anacostia Tributary Trail System

The system includes several hiker-biker trails, primarily: the Northeast Branch Trail, the Northwest Branch Trail, and the Paint Branch Trail; all of which are in Prince George's County. The trail system also includes the Sligo Creek Trail, which extends 8.85 miles (14.24 km)[1] and crosses Prince George's County and Montgomery County. The majority of the routes consist of protected stream valley parks established by M-NCPPC in the 1930s.

The trail system converges on a zero milepost in Hyattsville in an area known as Port Towns, named after the former deepwater port of Bladensburg at the head of the Anacostia River, where the various tributaries converge. A trail along the Anacostia connects the system to Washington, DC, near the New York Avenue Bridge where it continues as the Anacostia River Trail. And a trail connector from the West Hyattsville Metro Station will eventually connect it with DC's Metropolitan Branch Trail at Fort Totten. The trail system also constitutes part of the Rhode Island Avenue Trolley Trail, with which it connects.

The area covered by the trails corresponds with the coastal plain section of the Anacostia watershed, which consists of wide floodplains that were reserved for parkland and flood-control by the Army Corps of Engineers, using a system of levees and concrete embankments upon which the trails were initially built. In conjunction with the restoration of natural habitat along the adjoining stream valleys in the 1990s, M-NCPPC and Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation connected and upgraded the stream valley trails into a consistent network of approximately 24 miles (39 km) of paved 6–10-foot-wide (1.8–3.0 m) off-road paths.

Northwest Branch Trail in Silver Spring, MD

7 miles (11 km) of trail located between Hyattsville and Adelphi near New Hampshire Avenue and the Capital Beltway. The paved trail terminates at the southern terminus of the Rachel Carson Environmental Area just south of the Beltway near Adelphi Mill. The Rachel Carson Greenway extends the Northwest Branch Trail into northern Montgomery County as an unimproved hiking trail, connecting to Wheaton Regional Park.[2]

Metropolitan Branch trail connector

Main article: Metropolitan Branch Trail

Metropolitan Branch Trail

A connecting trail has been proposed to connect the Anacostia Tributary Trails system to the Metropolitan Branch rail-trail in Washington, to connect several long-distance hiker-biker trails as part of a series of coast-to-coast greenways. The connection would terminate at the Northwest Branch Trail in the vicinity of the West Hyattsville Metro station, approximately 1.8 miles west of the zero milepost, and would parallel the Green Line (Washington Metro) into D.C.

2.5 miles (4 km) of trail located predominantly along the levee of the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia River in Riverdale Park. The trail's zero milepost is in Hyattsville, just north of the confluence of the Northeast and Northwest Branches of the Anacostia. It continues up to the levee to Edmonston. The trail is not far from Greenbelt Park or the College Park Metro station. The first 1.5 miles of the Northeast Branch from Old Riverdale Road to Calvert Road (renamed Paint Branch Parkway, and renamed Campus Drive) in Riverdale (now College Park) opened in 1977 and was originally named the Denis Wolf Trail by M-NCPPC. It was named for Wolf, a cyclist killed by a drunk driver in 1974, after Wolf's family raised $3,000 for the trail. Eventually, the trail was absorbed into the Northeast Branch Trail, but a Denis Wolf Rest Stop, built in the 1980s still exists just south of Campus Drive.[3]

Anacostia Trail NW Branch crossing

3.1 miles (5.0 km) of trail located on the edge of Washington along the head of the Anacostia. The trail starts at Colmar Manor, immediately south of the zero milepost and splits in two at the trail bridge over the Anacostia to Bladensburg Waterfront Park. The west side trail ends at Dueling Creek, short of the Washington line and the east side trail ends at the District boundary just north of the New York Avenue Bridge where it continues as DC's Anacostia River Trail. In 2005, the trail bridge linking Bladensburg and Colmar Manor was completed.[6] In November of 2011, the 1.5 miles (2.4 km) section of the west side trail from the waterfront park to an unnamed tributary just north of the District boundary, built in part as environmental mitigation for the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, was opened.[7] The trail was completed to the boundary in 2016 as part of a stimulus project and opened on Halloween of that year.

A separate system of trails in the upper Paint Branch watershed has been constructed in the Montgomery County portion of Paint Branch Park.[8] The two trail systems are separated by the fall line and the Beltway.

• Anacostia River
  • Northwest Branch
  • Paint Branch
• Sligo Creek
  • Sligo Creek Trail
• Metropolitan Branch Trail
• Hyattsville, Maryland

• "Map of Anacostia Tributary Trail System" (PDF). Bike Maryland. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
• "Anacostia Tributary Trail System". Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Archived from the original on July 25, 2010. Retrieved November 14, 2009.
• "Anacostia Tributary Trail System". Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation. Archived from the original on November 28, 2009. Retrieved November 14, 2009.
• "The Anacostia Tributary Trails". Bike Washington. Retrieved November 14, 2009.

• Anacostia Tributaries Trail System

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