The Northwest Branch

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The Northwest Branch is the largest sub-watershed of the  Anacostia River.  The majority of the watershed is located in Montgomery  and Prince George's counties,  Maryland.  It stretches over 19  miles from the headwaters in Sandy Spring, MD to Bladensburg, MD, where it joins the Northeast Branch to form the Anacostia  River.  The  watershed in Montgomery County includes portions of the communities of  Norwood, Bel Pre Manor, Colesville, Layhill, Glenmont, Wheaton,  Hillandale, White Oak, Silver Spring, Kemp Mill, Four Corners and Takoma  Park. The Prince George's County portion of the watershed includes  Langley Park, University Park, Chillum, Hyattsville, Avondale and  Brentwood. The total watershed area, including a small portion of land  in NE Washington, D.C., is 53.5 sq. mi. (139 sq. km.), with a resident  population of about 254,000.    

Wondering whether you live within this watershed?

The boundaries of the Northwest Branch subwatershed are generally outlined by Olney-Sandy Spring Road to the north, New Hampshire Avenue and Adelphi Road to the east, University Boulevard and Georgia Avenue to the west, and the southern edge of Hyattsville to the south. Seventy-four percent of the subwatershed is in Montgomery County, 18% is in Prince George's County, and 8% is in the District of Columbia.  And if you live in the Sligo Creek subwatershed, you are in the greater Northwest Branch one as well.

What is the condition of the Northwest Branch?

Unfortunately, the Northwest Branch has been in decline for many years. First the forests were cleared for agriculture, resulting in huge amounts of muddy runoff. Then the watershed was developed, in many cases with no stormwater controls.  The lower stretch was straightened and channelized. The upper portions of the Northwest Branch still support some of the healthiest fish and water insect populations in the entire Anacostia watershed, and the streamvalley has many remarkable and beautiful stretches.

Take a look below at some of the beautiful reasons we have dedicated ourselves to restoring this stream. See also the challenges it faces: gushing stormwater, invasive non-native plants, and litter.  As a special treat, scroll way down for an historical perspective.  Then resolve to join us in restoring this urban treasure to health!

Northwest Branch bears a name which may describe the direction from  which it flows but gives no hint of the features which render it  remarkable in the eyes of men who have explored it.  Even its name is  vague, because, while it may be northwest from one point of view, it is  northeast, southwest or southeast from other points of view.  Its  geographical designation does not mean much.  So far as the Rambler  knows, there is no Northeast branch, and if its name is intended to show  its relation to the Eastern branch, into which it flows, it might, with  a nearer approach to accuracy, be called Western branch.  Of course it  does not flow northwest, but flows south and a little east of south.  If  the direction of its flow was meant to be described by a name it should  have been called South branch.

 To the west of Northwest branch is a branch which flows very nearly due  south, and its name is North branch.  But that branch has nothing to do  with Northwest branch because it flows into Rock creek, paralleling that  creek for about seven miles and joining it near the hamlet of Avery,  two and a half miles northeast of Rockville.  West of Northwest branch  is one called Long branch, which is really a short branch, being not  more than three miles long, while the branch into which it empties,  Sligo, is something over eight miles long, beginning on the south slope  of the high land around Wheaton and uniting with Northwest branch about  two miles west of Hyattsville.  In relation to its neighbor streams  Northwest branch might properly have been called Big branch, but the  idea seems not to have occurred to those early settlers in that part of  Maryland which in 1776, the Maryland convention decreed should be  Montgomery county.

  However, one should not quarrel about names any more than about tastes,  and if the name of a branch does not fit it, it is stupid to write a  half column of criticism of the branch.  Northwest branch had nothing to  do with the selection of its name, and so far as history records, the  Rambler is the first person to make any objection to it.  Northwest  branch may be northwest of Bladensburg and Hyattsville, but it is  northeast of Washington.  It is west of Riggs mill, Aveney (Avenel?),  White Oak, Colesville and Norwood and it is east of Oakdale, Norbeck,  Layhille, Glenmont, Wheaton and Takoma, so what's the use of making any  protest.  Northwest branch is too busy to listen to protest and flows on  as though perfectly content with its name.

  But it does seem to the Rambler that as many of the Montgomery and  Prince Georges county branches have reasonably descriptive names - as,  for example, Paint branch, Rock creek, Piney branch, Mill creek, Rock  run, Cabin branch, Wildcat creek, Ten Mile creek, Broad branch, Horsepen  branch, Muddy branch, Indian creek, Beaverdam branch and Oxon run - the  gentle man who christened one of the wonderfully scenic and romantic  creeks, Northwest branch might have made a better job of it.  He might  have called it Laurel Thicket run, Boulder creek, Gorge run, Chasm  creek, Swimming Hole branch or Roaring brook.  At Great Falls is a tract  of land granted by the state of Maryland in 1807 to Alexander Adams and  William Lodge which then bore the significant name of "Hard to Come  At," and since 1838 has borne the name of "Resurvey of Hard to Come At."   It is a curious and unusual name for a tract of land, but those who  named it were acquainted with the property.  If they had been called  upon to pick a name for Northwest branch they would probably have called  it "Hard to Get Along creek."  The people who gave that beautiful  Virginia creek near Great Falls the name of "Difficult run" would  probably have named Northwest branch "Worse Than Difficult run."  

Northwest branch rises in that civil subdivision of Montgomery county  called Olney, or election district No. 8.  One head of the branch rises  about a mile south of Sandy Spring, one rises west of the road from  Ednor to Ashton, and two or three rise in a rough triangular bit of  country, only ten miles north of the northern point of the District, is  the watershed which turns some streams toward the Potomac and the  Eastern branch and others toward the Patuxent.

 The region of the origin of the branch is described by geologists as  derived from "light granitoid rocks often with mica in parallel folio,"  and the Maryland geological survey classifies the soils as "loam,  slightly sandy; good farm lands, wheat, hay, corn and oats."  Close to  where the stream crosses from Montgomery county into Prince Georges it  runs into the Patuxent group of the Mesozoic and tertiary, where  interbeded sands and clays extend to a depth of 350 feet, and of the  soil the Maryland geological survey says: "Clays and sandy clays; rather  poor soil for general crops." "Soil is as soil does," and much of the  soil in that part of Prince Georges has by skillful tillage been brought  to a high degree of fertility.  Through much of this country,  especially in the Montgomery county section, Northwest branch has  scoured down through soil of the weathered rocks deep into the basin  rock, or the "light granitoid rock often with mica in paralleled folia."   It is because of this deep cutting that Northwest branch presents such  allurements for a hard walk. 

 The Rambler did not follow the branch from its mouth to its source,  because that would entail too much work for a pleasant Sunday walk, but  he entered the valley of the creek at Burnt Mills, where the Colesville  pike from Sligo to Colesville crosses the branch.  The Rambler has often  walked along that road, past beautiful Alton farm, and has written  lengthy accounts of such interesting places along the way as Indian  Spring farm, Four Corners, Burnt Mills, White Oak and Pleasant View.   All those places are still there and have undergone little change since  the Rambler jotted down all the information he could gather concerning  them. 

 Burnt Mills is not what its name signifies, but takes the name from the  fact that a mill which stood near it was probably destroyed by fire.   Several years ago the Rambler was told by Ezra Troth, the miller, that  he, Troth, had sought to trace the reason for the name "Burnt Mills."   He said he had asked the question of a very old colored man who had  lived in the neighborhood all his life.  The colored man said that his  father had lived in that neighborhood all his life and that he had died  at a good old age, but he had heard him say that he could not remember  that a mill ever burned at that place.  The Rambler was told, however,  that a search among the alders and elders by the side of the stream  about six hundred yards above the present mill would reveal traces of an  ancient mill foundation and signs of a long abandoned mill race.  At  the time when the Rambler sought to get at the reason for the name  "Burnt Mills" he obtained the following statement form Samuel D. Waters,  at one time part owner of the mill property:

  "When I moved to Burnt Mills in 1878 I talked with an old resident,  Louis Patten, then ninety years old.  The date of his birth would carry  us back to 1788.  He told me that the mill had not been burned in his  lifetime, but that the story had been handed down to him as a boy that a  mill which stood above the site of the present mill had been burned.   He had never heard the date of the destruction of the mill, but he  thought it had occurred a half or three-quarters of a century before his  birth.  As far back as my records go, Burnt Mills was the property of  Richard Israel, and after him his son-in-law, James L. Bond, later  became the owner.  Bond was succeeded in the ownership of the mill  property in the seventies by his sons-in-law, Samuel D. Waters and  William E. Manakee, doing business under the firm name of Waters &  Manakee.  The mill then became the property of Dr. George W. Bready." 

 The Rambler has a theory, because of the finding of an old copper  stencil in the present mill, the mill which has been forgotten was  called Glen Cairn mill, but this is merely a theory, useful to think  about in the absence of any facts concerning that mill which vanished so  long ago, that but for the present name "Burnt Mills" nobody would  suspect that it had existed.  ...

 Burnt Mills, Montgomery county, is seated in a deep basin with high  hills all around it.  The level of the high surrounding country is from  one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet above the stream.  That does  not strike one as an imposing altitude, but, looking from the hills down  into the basin and the gorge which the stream has torn for itself  through the hills, the depth is very impressive. 

 The bottom of this bowl is far beneath solid masses of those familiar  rocks called the gneisses - Carolina gneiss, granite-gneiss, etc.  In  the Washington folio of the Geologic Atlas of the United States,  embracing the District of Columbia and adjacent parts of Maryland and  Virginia, issued by the geological survey, there is this interesting  paragraph concerning the rocks of the neighborhood: 

 "The rocks themselves thus yield records of widely separate epochs  from the earliest age of geologic history to the present.  The entire  record may be summarized as follows:  From the earliest formation to the  latest.  Earliest of all was the production of the great bodies of  Carolina gneiss.  Its origin, whether igneous or sedimentary, is buried  in obscurity.  It represents a complex development and many processes of  change, in the course of which all original characters have been  obliterated.  The gneiss is, however, distinct from and much older than  any other formation yet identified on the Piedmont plateau, and the time  of its production is the earliest of which we have record.

  During succeeding epochs masses of igneous rock were forced into the  gneiss.  The lapse of time was great, the nature of the igneous rocks  changed repeatedly, and later intrusive masses were forced into the  earlier.  The granitic texture of some of the formations and the  lamination and schistosity of others were produced at great depths below  the surface.  Upon these once deep-seated rocks now rest lavas which  poured forth upon the surface in pre-Cambrian time.  Thus there are in  contact two extremes of igneous rock - those which consolidated at  considerable depth and those which cooled at the surface.  The more  ancient crystalline complex had therefore undergone uplift and  long-continued erosion before the period of volcanic activity began.   The complex may be safely referred to the Archean period.  Whether these  ancient lavas represent a late portion of the Archean or are of the  Algonkian age is not certain.  The latter, however, is more probable." 

 The rocks of the Washington district are divisible, say the geologist,  into two classes, the ancient and highly crystalline rocks and the  unconsolidated formations of the coastal plain.  The former generally  occur northwest and southwest of Washington, and the latter lie to the  east and south.  Among the crystalline rocks are gneiss, schist,  granite, diorite, gabbro, peridotite and rocks derived from these by  metamorphic action such as granite-gneiss, diorite-gneiss, serpentine  and soapstone.  The unconsolidated formations are the gravels, sands,  loams, maris and clays.  It is curious to behold how deep this basin of Burnt Mills has been  scoured below the old rocks and then given a covering of the soil  derived from decomposed rocks and brought down by rain and wind from the  top of the surrounding high land. ...

The "mountain laurel," which grows generally in the woods near  Washington and so luxuriantly along Northwest branch, is the evergreen  much used by fruiterers and other merchants in edibles as and aid in  window dressing.  The leaves are dark glossy green, pointed at each end  and oblong in form.  Botanists often dwell on the curious construction  of the flower and thus describe it:   "The corolla is deep saucer of bowl shaped, with five short, broad  lobes.  On the outside and around the lower edge of the bowl are ten  small humps that inside the corolla form little pockets to receive the  anthers of the slender white stamens, curving from the center of the  blossom like the spokes of a wheel." 

 The flowers are white, shading into cream and pink, and the flower stems  are sticky, so that only winged insects can get the nectar secreted at  the base of the greenish pistil.  Moths and bees are especially fond of  this nectar.  Great masses of these flowers bloom along the wooded  slopes of Rock creek and Broad branch.  Thousands of persons gather the  blossoms because of their spectacular effect in masses, but not one  person in a thousand will minutely examine one of the small flowers,  though such examination would be interesting.  The botanical name of the  shrub is kalmia, and one of the District streets leaking west from  Georgia avenue close to the District boundary bears that name.  The laurel has held a high place with various peoples of the ancient  world.  It was as important in some ways as the olive.  There were  divine properties in it.  Lightning could not strike it, and it is  related that the Emperor Tiberius used to put on a laurel crown during  an electric storm.  It gave protection in other ways, and the Greeks  used to hang a few of the leaves on the doors of their houses, and  laurel was hung upon the gates of the Caesars as a guard against  enemies, though it is not recorded that the armed sentries were  withdrawn because the laurel was on post.  Something of the future could  be read with the aid of laurel, for if the leaves could be heard to  crack in the sacred flame the future was bright, but if they made no  crackling sound one's worst fears might be realized.  It is written of the true laurel, which is native to the Caucasus,  northern Peris, northwestern Asia Minor and the Crimea, that its leaves  contain so much prussic acid that when bruised or crushed a vapor strong  enough to kill insects arises from them.  It has the odor and taste of  bitter almonds, and a weak solution made from the leaves has been used  for centuries as a flavoring material for food.  Oil of bitter almonds  may be distilled from the leaves of the true laurel. 

 You will at length pass out of the region of rocks and laurel and come  to where the stream flows gently over a sandy bed with earth banks along  its sides and rather open woods along the way.  These woods are marked  by numerous old but little traveled roads.  About two miles down stream  from the mill, and where the stream flows quietly, a concrete dam has  been built across it, so that when the sluice gates are closed the  branch for a long distance may be converted into a lake....  

  The stroll which the Rambler took last Sunday, and which he has tried to  tell of here, is recommended to all persons in need of exercise.