The Anacostia Tributary Trail System (ATTS) is a unified and signed system of stream valley trails joining trails along the Anacostia tributaries of Northwest Branch, Northeast Branch, Indian Creek and

Paint Branch Paint Branch is a tributaryU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 stream of the Anacostia River that flows Southeastwards through Montgomery County and Prince ...

with a trail along the Anacostia River, set aside and maintained by the

Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) is a bi-county agency that administers parks and planning in Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland. History The commission was formed in 1927 by the Maryland ...

(M-NCPPC) in the Maryland suburbs of

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

ATTS is a part of the

East Coast Greenway The East Coast Greenway is a pedestrian and bicycle route between Maine and Florida along the East Coast of the United States. In 2020, the Greenway received over 50 million visits. The nonprofit East Coast Greenway Alliance was created in 1991. ...

, a 3,000-mile-long system of trails connecting Maine to Florida and the

American Discovery Trail The American Discovery Trail is a system of recreational trails and roads that collectively form a coast-to-coast hiking and biking trail across the mid-tier of the United States. Horses can also be ridden on most of this trail. The coastal tra ...

, a trail system stretching from the Delaware coast to San Francisco.

Description

The system includes several hiker-biker trails, primarily: the Northeast Branch Trail, the

Northwest Branch Trail The Northwest Branch Trail is a multi-use (hiking, biking, equestrian) trail that follows the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC. It is part of the Rachel Carson Greenway and the Anacostia Trib ...

, and the Paint Branch Trail; all of which are in

Prince George's County ) , demonym = Prince Georgian , ZIP codes = 20607–20774 , area codes = 240, 301 , founded date = April 23 , founded year = 1696 , named for = Prince George of Denmark , leader_title = Executive , leader_name = Angela D. Alsobrook ...

. The trail system also includes the Sligo Creek Trail, which extends and crosses

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 Hyattsville is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and also a close, urban suburb of Washington, D.C. The population was 21,187 at the 2020 United States Census. History Before Europeans reached the area, the upper A ...

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 A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainag ...

converge. A trail along the Anacostia connects the system to Washington, DC, near the

New York Avenue Bridge The New York Avenue Bridge is a bridge carrying U.S. Route 50 and New York Avenue, NE over the Amtrak, CSX and WMATA rails in Washington, D.C. In November 2009, the District of Columbia Department of Transportation began a two-year $36.5 mill ...

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 The Metropolitan Branch Trail (informally, the Met Branch Trail) is an American rail trail that, when completed, will run eight miles (13 km) from the transit center in Silver Spring, Maryland, to Union Station in the District of Columbia. It ser ...

at Fort Totten. The trail system also constitutes part of the

Rhode Island Avenue Trolley Trail The Rhode Island Avenue Trolley Trail (formerly known as the ''College Park Trolley Trail'') is a long rail trail within the Cities of College Park Maryland, Riverdale Park Maryland and Hyattsville Maryland. Description The trail is built o ...

, with which it connects. The area covered by the trails corresponds with the

coastal plain A coastal plain is flat, low-lying land adjacent to a sea coast. A fall line commonly marks the border between a coastal plain and a piedmont area. Some of the largest coastal plains are in Alaska and the southeastern United States. The Gulf Co ...

section of the Anacostia watershed, which consists of wide

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

s 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 of paved off-road paths.

Northwest Branch Trail

7 miles (11 km) of trail located between Hyattsville and Adelphi near

New Hampshire Avenue New Hampshire Avenue is a diagonal street in Washington, D.C., beginning at the Kennedy Center and extending northeast for about 5 miles (8 km) and then continuing into Maryland where it is designated Maryland Route 650. New Hampshire Avenu ...

and the

Capital Beltway The Capital Beltway is a Interstate Highway in the Washington metropolitan area that surrounds Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, and its inner suburbs in adjacent Maryland and Virginia. It is the basis of the phrase " inside ...

. The paved trail terminates at the southern terminus of the Rachel Carson Environmental Area just south of the Beltway near

Adelphi Mill The Adelphi Mill is the only surviving historic mill in Prince George's County, Maryland. It is the oldest and largest mill in the Washington, D.C. area. History The Adelphi Mill and Storehouse is located on the Northwest Branch of the Anacosti ...

. The Rachel Carson Greenway extends the Northwest Branch Trail into northern Montgomery County as an unimproved hiking trail, connecting to Wheaton Regional Park.

Sligo Creek Trail

of trail located predominantly in Montgomery County, ending in Wheaton in the vicinity of

Wheaton Regional Park Wheaton Regional Park is a public park and county-designated protected area, located in Wheaton, Maryland. It is operated and managed by Montgomery County Parks (Montgomery Parks), a division of a bi-county agency, Maryland-National Capital Park ...

. The Sligo Creek trail originates at the

at Chillum Community Park,

, approximately 2.2 miles west of the zero milepost. The section of trail through Takoma Park was connected to the rest of the Anacostia Tributary Trail System in the late 1990s, as part of a storm sewer reclamation project by the

Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC Water) is a bi-county political subdivision of the State of Maryland that provides safe drinking water and wastewater treatment for Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland excep ...

. This section was aligned to follow the path of the storm drain through the narrow valley in the vicinity of the

Fall Line A fall line (or fall zone) is the area where an upland region and a coastal plain meet and is typically prominent where rivers cross it, with resulting rapids or waterfalls. The uplands are relatively hard crystalline basement rock, and the coa ...

Metropolitan Branch trail connector

Metropolitan Branch Trail-6 (4575391099)

A connecting trail has been proposed to connect the Anacostia Tributary Trails system to the

Metropolitan Branch Metropolitan may refer to: * Metropolitan area, a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories * Metropolitan borough, a form of local government district in England * Metropolitan county, a typ ...

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) The Green Line is a rapid transit line of the Washington Metro system, consisting of 21 stations in the District of Columbia and Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The Green Line runs from to . It was the last line in the ori ...

into D.C.

Northeast Branch Trail

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.

Indian Creek Trail

1 mile (1.8 km) of trail constructed around

Lake Artemesia Lake Artemesia is a man-made lake in Prince George's County, Maryland, located within the Lake Artemesia Natural Area in College Park and Berwyn Heights. The lake covers an area of , and the surrounding natural area is administered by Marylan ...

in the vicinity of

Greenbelt A green belt is a policy and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges, which h ...

. The Northeast Branch Trail terminates at the zero milepost of the Paint Branch Trail, where this trail and several other trails split off towards Greenbelt Park. Lake Artemesia Park and the trails around it opened on July 23, 1992. Sand, soil and gravel were needed to construct Metro's Green Line and those materials were taken from the land the park sits on now, with the removal creating the basin for the lakes.

Paint Branch Trail

The portion of trail connected to the ATTS consists of of signed trail between the College Park Airport and Museum and Cherry Hill Road in College Park.

Little Paint Branch Trail

In 2018-19, the M-NCPPC extended the Little Paint Branch Trail 2.1 miles from its terminus at the Beltsville Community Center to Cherry Hill Road where it connected to the Paint Branch Trail becoming an extension of the ATTS.

Anacostia River Trail

of trail located on the edge of Washington along the head of the Anacostia. The trail starts at

Colmar Manor Colmar Manor is a town located in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a population of 1,404. As the town developed at the beginning of the 20th century, it assumed a name derived from its proximity t ...

, 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

where it continues as DC's Anacostia River Trail. In 2005, the trail bridge linking Bladensburg and Colmar Manor was completed. In November of 2011, the 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 The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge (also known as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge or the Wilson Bridge) is a bascule bridge that spans the Potomac River between the independent city of Alexandria, Virginia, and Oxon Hill in Prince George's County, ...

, was opened. 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. The two trail systems are separated by the

fall line A fall line (or fall zone) is the area where an upland region and a coastal plain meet and is typically prominent where rivers cross it, with resulting rapids or waterfalls. The uplands are relatively hard crystalline basement rock, and the coa ...

and the Beltway.

References

External links

Anacostia Tributaries Trail System
{{coord, 38, 57, 41.2, N, 76, 55, 31, W, display=title Bike paths in Maryland East Coast Greenway Hiking trails in Maryland Protected areas of Prince George's County, Maryland Protected areas of Montgomery County, Maryland