What Archeology Has Found in Rock Creek Park, From Ancient Quarries to the Civil War

Rock Creek Park is a 1,755-acre wooded refuge in the heart of Washington, D.C., plus parcels scattered across the city's northwest. People lived on this land for thousands of years before the park was created in 1890 — and dozens still lived inside it then. Archeology has brought many of their stories to light.

Officers and men of Company F, 3rd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, at Fort Stevens. Library of Congress

Ancient quarries and camps

• Quartzite quarries on Piney Branch. Beds of cobbles along this Rock Creek tributary were quarried heavily between 2,500 and 2,000 BCE. In the 1890s, William Henry Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology showed that what others took for ancient hand axes were really the early stages of making fine spear points — helping settle an early debate over how long people had been in the Americas.
• Camps at Little Falls. At the head of navigation on the Potomac, people camped on small level spots, just 50–75 feet wide, at the foot of the falls. Each 3-by-3-foot excavation unit held 1,000 to 1,900 artifacts — one held up to 24 projectile points and 182 pottery sherds. The sites were used from 2,500 BCE to after 1,000 CE, perhaps as winter shelter, a hiding place from enemies, or a stop on the portage around the falls.

A Native American pottery sherd found near Little Falls. Photo by the National Park Service

The colonial frontier

Archival research shows the Maryland Rangers used a fort in or near the park in the 1690s, when the colony's frontier was under heavy attack. No trace of the fort has been found, but archeologists did find three tenant homesites from the 1700s, on land owned by absentee landlords. The tenants cleared land and pushed the frontier outward, but moved often and left little in written records — their pottery, glass and metal tell more.

The Civil War

Several forts defending Washington stand in the park; archeologists found a large wartime garbage dump near one, and several small earthworks. The forts saw action only once — in July 1864, when Gen. Jubal Early's Confederates raided toward the capital. Stopped by Fort Stevens' guns, they tried to slip down the Rock Creek valley, where dismounted cavalry, War Department clerks and garrison troops, backed by artillery, turned them back. Bullets and shell fragments mark the attackers' positions.

Nineteenth-century life

When the park was created it contained two large mansions, dozens of smaller homes and two working mills. Records show most tenants were Black or Irish. In 1890, one tenant house was home to Sarah Whitby, a widowed Black laundress with seven children.

A metal cart-driver toy from about 1900, found at a Black family's home. Photo by the National Park Service

More: the park's archeological study, the Civil War Defenses of Washington, and the series on the Sarah Whitby site.

Sources

Based on "Archeology and History in Rock Creek Park," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source's "Bureau of Ethnography" is corrected to the Bureau of Ethnology.