Battery Kemble Park

(Photo credits: Craig Swain)

I’m going to start from the beginning, with the very first park that I explored by myself as a kid. Battery Kemble Park is a relatively small park, even by D.C. standards. But when you’re twelve years old, it looks as big as Yellowstone.

In those days, I fancied myself as a brave explorer like Hernando DeSoto or Meriwether Lewis, fearlessly venturing into uncharted wilderness. That day (April 14, 1960), I explored the main trail from MacArthur Boulevard up to the open meadow, a half mile each way at the most. But by the time I returned to my bicycle, I was hooked on hiking. Other parks and other trails followed in quick succession.

Battery Kemble Park is a small but delightful preserve extending from Nebraska Avenue to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal at Fletcher's Boathouse. The northern portion is historically significant. Battery Kemble was one of a series of forts built in a circle around Washington to defend the city from Confederate attack during the Civil War. Like most of the others, Battery Kemble saw no action during the war. In the early decades of the twentieth century, its owner maintained part of the area as a private zoo. The National Park Service acquired it later. Planners drew up designs for a road named "Fort Drive", which would have connected most of the above-mentioned forts and buried the park under concrete.

Fortunately, this did not happen, and today two trails lead through the wooded valley to MacArthur Boulevard, and one of them continues to the C&O Canal down through a steep, scenic ravine. The Wesley Heights Trail connects Battery Kemble to Glover-Archbold Park.

I’ve heard various stories about the private zoo. But the only remnant of it is a cement dam across the creek a short distance south of the meadow.

The park begins at the intersection of Foxhall Road and Nebraska Avenue, N.W., a short distance from American University. (Metrobus M4, weekdays only). The trail starts in the far right hand corner of the open area, and extends about 1.20 miles to the C&O Canal at Fletcher’s Boathouse.

The trail soon enters the big meadow below the fort site. The open slopes to the right are used for exercising dogs, sledding and even skiing if there’s enough snow.

After crossing the parking lot, the trail bears left, enters the woods, and soon joins a small creek. I’ve heard the stream called Battery Kemble Run, but it may not have a formal name at all. You soon pass the cement dam mentioned above, then a wooden footbridge. This marks the beginning of the yellow-blazed Wesley Heights Trail. It leads eastward to connect with Glover-Archbold Park.

After another pleasant half mile through the woods and along the stream, the path reaches MacArthur Boulevard. (Metrobus D6). It picks up on the other side to the left of an old schoolhouse that in later years was a branch of the DC Public Library. Today, it is used for a children’s educational program called Discovery Creek.

Continue on the trail downstream, with the ravine to the left becoming deeper. At this point, the routing gets a little tricky. Take one of several side trails down to the creek. Cross it, then follow a rough trail along the opposite bank. The creek passes through some attractive cascades at this point. Use caution as the trail goes down over some rocks.

Ahead, you can see the C&O Canal, the Potomac River and Fletcher’s Boathouse. But you have to get by Canal Road first. You could cross the road, but traffic is heavy at all times and it moves very fast. I suggest going through the culvert that carries Battery Kemble Run beneath the road. There is a crude cement walkway through it. Then you have to climb over a wooden railing to emerge onto one of the access roads to the boathouse complex. Turn left for a few yards, then go right and cross the C&O Canal on a footbridge.

On the canal towpath, it is 1.78 miles to the left, to the south end of the Glover-Archbold Trail, and about another mile to the main Rock Creek Park Trail. To the right, it is 11.16 miles to Great Falls, 19.66 miles to Seneca, and about 55 miles to the Appalachian Trail at Weverton. The Capital Crescent Trail is a few yards below the towpath and runs parallel to it in this area. Go right and it will take you to Bethesda and Silver Spring. The way that all of these trails interlock and connect is amazing.

There is also an upper trail in Battery Kemble Park that leads from the meadow area to MacArthur Boulevard. Follow the gravel access road uphill until it bears right, then follow the trail that strikes out across a glade. It winds back and forth parallel to Chain Bridge Road and joins the lower trail just before MacArthur Boulevard. The two trails make a short, easy loop hike.

More Introductory Stuff

OK, well I've finally gotten around to making a second post. I was bogged down with technical computer matters for a few days, which distracted me a bit.

I have a few more introductory things to take care of first:

Maps: Few if any of the trails that I write about here traverse true wilderness areas, and the consequences of getting lost are not as severe as they would be on the Appalachian Trail or in the remote sections of Shenandoah National Park. Nonetheless, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) publishes two maps which local hikers will find useful for planning, as well as trail-finding purposes. Map N "Rock Creek Park Area, DC", covers all of the trails in Northwest D.C. Map D "Trails in the Potomac Gorge Area" covers trails along the Potomac River upstream of the Capital Beltway.

The maps can be purchased at backpacking stores in the Washington area, or they may be ordered directly from PATC. Go to their on-line store and click on "By State," then "District of Columbia and Vicinity."

The National Park Service distributes free maps of areas under its jurisdiction; however, they are less comprehensive than the PATC maps, and do not show as much detail.

Public Transportation: Most other hiking resources only mention transit lines in passing or ignore them completely. One advantage of hiking locally is that it doesn't always require a car. I explored most of these trails when I was a teenager and didn’t even have a driver’s license. By using transit, hikers can take long, linear hikes and return to their cars without retracing their steps or arranging for a car shuttle. I will mention transit lines where they intersect trails and provide a link to the appropriate timetable, generally in PDF form.

Welcome

Hiking trails of where ?

You read it correctly: Hiking Trails of Washington, D.C. For most people, the first thoughts that come to mind about the District of Columbia are things like crooked politicians, shining white monuments with cherry trees, or the Smithsonian museums.

Regardless of your impressions of my home town, you probably don’t associate Washington with blue-blazed hiking trails along ridgetops. Or forests populated by pileated woodpeckers. Or a deer that bounds away from you as you approach it on a wooded trail. But you can find these and more right in the District of Columbia.

In terms of hiking opportunities, Washington, D.C. is unique among American cities of its size. Few if any other urban areas can boast of a system of interconnecting hiking trails even in the close-in suburbs, let alone the city itself. But in our nation's capital, one can hike through thick woods that seem to be miles from civilization, and then walk back into the maelstrom of the city in a matter of minutes.

Nonetheless, many avid hikers who live in Washington never think about walking these trails that are practically on their doorstep. As if on automatic pilot, they point their walking sticks westward to Shenandoah National Park or the Appalachian Trail. The result is severe overcrowding that diminishes the wilderness experience. On Old Rag Mountain, the congestion has become so severe that the National Park Service has been forced to build satellite parking lots. Likewise, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath has become the "New Jersey Turnpike of hiking trails" on summer Sundays. But directly across the river on the Potomac Heritage Trail, the fortunate hiker who knows that it’s there will probably have a mile or two of the trail to himself.

You don’t have to spend a fortune on gas to hike these trails. I’ve hiked many of them without using my car at all. The wealth of public transportation in Washington eliminates, in most cases, the need for a cumbersome car shuttle on one-way hikes. The only major trails not on bus or rail lines are ones in or beyond the outer suburbs. I’ll deal with those after I’ve written about everything in the city itself.

Look at any decent map of Washington closely. In the northwest quadrant, you will see an amazing matrix of stream valley parks and narrow greenways, all of which tie together. Rock Creek, Glover-Archbold, and Battery Kemble parks all have a north-south orientation. Whitehaven, Pinehurst Branch, Wesley Heights, Soapstone Valley, Melvin Hazen and the C&O Canal parks are on an east-west axis. The Capital Crescent Trail is both, as it travels west before swinging north in an arc around the city.

I know what you’re probably thinking if you’ve read this far. What about crime? Are these parks safe to walk in? Well, I’ve been hiking in them for about 48 years and have never been a victim of a crime. No place is completely crime-free. Several hikers have been murdered on the Appalachian Trail over the years. In Shenandoah National Park, two women were murdered in 1996 at a backcountry campsite.

Most people don’t realize it, but the media tends to sensationalize the crime that does occur. The Washington Post recently did a six part series on Chandra Levy, whose body was found in Rock Creek Park in 2001. Don’t get me wrong. This crime was a tragedy, and every human life is precious. However, it is safe to say that this sort of thing does not happen in Washington parks very often. When something does happen, the newspapers and TV news blow it all out of proportion and make you feel that you’d be safer in Iraq than in whatever park was involved.

Just use some common sense. Don’t hike after dark. (most of the parks in the city are legally closed at dark anyway, and no camping is permitted). Don’t wear flashy jewelry, watches or anything else that will draw attention to yourself. If you are fearful about hiking alone, take a companion.

It is my hope that this blog will help familiarize Washington area hikers about opportunities in their own back yard. Reducing automobile use should be a goal of every lover of the outdoors. Some hikers think nothing of driving 200 miles round trip for a day’s hiking in the Blue Ridge. And many people have no idea that the trails I plan to write about even exist. I have hiked many of them without seeing another person the entire distance.

I will cover one park or trail at a time in upcoming posts. Some, like Rock Creek Park, will probably require several posts.

The distance figures are derived from a project I carried out in the early 1990s. I measured each trail with a measuring wheel and wrote extremely detailed writeups about it. I won't bore you with that, but I'll use the mileage figures when it's helpful. Distances are calibrated to the nearest hundredth of a mile, for example 1.19 miles.

Stay tuned and happy hiking.