Rock Creek Park: A Nature and History Walk (Guided Walk — Smithsonian Associates)

Register

Spend a fall morning exploring the verdant wooded trails of Rock Creek Park with naturalist Melanie Choukas-Bradley, author of the award-winning A Year in Rock Creek Park: The Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington, DC. She surveys the botanically diverse native trees of Rock Creek Park’s floodplain forest and upland woods and covers the history of D.C.’s woodland gem, the oldest urban national park in the country, twice the size of Central Park. View the outcrops where an exuberant President Theodore Roosevelt led his famous rock scrambles and get acquainted with the well-maintained trail network that now provides recreation for millions of local residents and visitors annually.

The walk begins near Peirce Mill, the historic and recently restored grist mill that celebrates the region’s agrarian past. Participants view the adjacent fish ladder that opened the spawning route for migrating shad and herring, dubbed the “herring highway.”

This guided walk is also available on October 20 and October 21.