National Capital Parks - East
Washington D.C. and Maryland
Visited: May 5, 2006
NPS Site Visited: 292 of 353
NPS Website
 WHAT IS IT?
A conglomeration of D.C.-area Park Sites that have little in common except their slightly proximate geography.
The NPS National Capitol Parks-East lists the following 13 major Park Sites caught in the NCP-E umbrella. National Parks Passport stamps exist at most of these Site's Visitor Centers. You can eliminate a day's worth of collecting by heading straight towards NCP-E Headquarters in Anacostia Park; they provide all the stamps in one easy setting.
The links will take you to our reviews:
Anacostia Park
1,200 acres of shoreline which clings both sides of the Anacostia River for nearly 11 miles.
Capitol Hill Parks
Because D.C. is not a state, every square inch of every city Park is under federal jurisdiction. If you see public space in the District, it is a National Park. We can't visit every acre of public land in D.C. nor would we want to although we did hear about a National Geographic employee who was attempting that very bold and quixotic task. Good luck fellow completist. We understand your needs.
The long and the short is that we have walked through many parks on Capitol Hill and it would be ridiculous to write a review recounting all of their idiosyncratic sculptures remembering General such and such who fought in some triumphant war.
"Wait a sec. Aren't those picayune descriptions the very point of your website," you ask. Uh, let's just move on to the next description.
Carter G. Woodson Home NHS
1915-1950 Shaw neighborhood home of Carter G. Woodson: professor, pioneering historian and founder of Black History Month.
Fort Dupont Park
The NPS counts Fort Dupont as only a part of the NCP-E and not as an official Park Site on its own accord. That's our excuse for not visiting. We will probably find a way to see this circle of preserved Civil War earthen fortifications at some point in the future. The distant future.
Fort Washington Park and Fort Foote Park
Two long-defunct Potomac River-facing forts whose purpose was to protect Washington D.C. from waterborne invaders. Neither fort ever faced an enemy’s military attack.
 Frederick Douglass NHS
Hilltop Anacostia mansion and, from 1877 to 1895, home of famed African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Greenbelt Park
Over 1,000 acres of pine and deciduous forests nestled in between the sprawling metropolises of Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Md.
Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens
The Aquatic Gardens are located within Anacostia Park's borders. They are an interconnected 12-acre rectangular-shaped series of shallow, stagnant pools where, in the summer months, lotus flowers and tropical water-lilies blossom. The Park is also home to one of Washington, D.C.'s last remaining dense marshy swamps.
Langston Golf Course
There is no chance our USA-C2C trip will include a golf course be it public or private, historic or just built last year.
Mary McLeod Bethune Council House NHS
Stately Victorian-era home of Mary McLeod Bethune and longtime headquarters of the organization she founded, the National Council of Negro Women.
Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm
An NPS-operated working farm replete with red barns, silos, John Deere tractors, cattle, hogs and draught horses. The farm’s most remarkable characteristic is its location, a narrow swath in-between Interstate 295 and the D.C. Beltway in an otherwise decidedly urban setting.
 Piscataway Park
Six miles of prime Potomac River bordering real estate that became a National Park in 1961 in order to provide pristine, 18th-century-worthy views from George Washington’s plantation home, Mount Vernon, located directly across the water. The Park includes the privately run National Colonial Farm, a living history museum that depicts a circa 1770 middle class Virginia family’s tobacco farm.
Sewall Belmont House and Museum
The current home of the National Women's Party and longtime home of its suffragist founder Alice Paul.
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