Here are some of the sites seen on the Bike EcoTour with the Rotary Club of North Bethesda.
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Meadowbrook Park: This park comprises 16.6 acres in Chevy Chase, just south of East-West Highway and adjacent to Rock Creek Park. The park includes a large playground, five softball fields, a lighted baseball field, four lighted tennis courts, football/soccer fields, indoor bathroom facilities, handicap accessible, and a picnic area. Longtime residents will remember when the playground equipment was painted with red-and-white stripes ("Candy Cane city') and visitors forged the creek to get to the park.
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Boundary Bridge: This bridge over Rock Creek marks the boundary between D.C. and Maryland, and is the northernmost boundary of the National Park Service land. Boundary Bridge area has a parking lot will have directional signs to two trailheads: Western Ridge and Valley. Both are aptly named, are easy-to-moderate treks, and both end at Pierce Mill.
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Riley Spring Bridge: This footbridge connects two popular hiking trail, the Western Ridge Trail, to the Vallley Trail.
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Sherrill Drive USGS Gage: The USGS monitoring site near Sherrill Road in Rock Creek Park has been recording data since 1929. Flow in the creek is affected by two upstream reservoirs, Lake Needwood on Rock Creek since Sept. 1966 and Bernard Frank Lake on North Branch Rock Creek since February 1968. This unassuming metal structure includes equipment that sends data to the USGS and a part of a national streamflow monitoring network.
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Pinehurst Branch and Soapstone Branch: This area was named "Best Place in Rock Creek Park You’ve Never Been To" in the City Paper's Best of DC 2008. Native Americans quarried several rock deposits in the area for tool supplies. The stream flows from the Western Avenue area down to where it meets Rock Creek. From Van Ness Metro, you can find trailheads on either Yuma or Albemarle St.
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Milkhouse Ford: This creek crossing dates back to the early 1800s, when farms occupied both sides of the creek above Peirce Mill. Until the Military Road bridge was built during the Civil War era, it was the only public road crossing in the area. After creation of Rock Creek park in the 1890s, it became a popular picnic spot for Washingtonians who wanted to wade in the Creek. It is the oldest ford across the creek and was a public road until the 1980s. As part of the fish passage project in 2003-2007, the ford was lowered and reconstructed to allow for easier passage by herring.
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Miller's Cabin: Former home of Cincinnatus Hiner Miller, also known as Joaquin Miller, the "poet of the Sierras", was built in the early 1900s and originally located in Meridian Hill Park in the District. It was moved to Rock Creek Park in 1913. He was a colorful American poet and essayist who wrote about various adventures in the west. The cabin is considered the only known example of late 19th century rustic-style log cabins in Washington. (Source: Wikipedia)
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Rapids Bridge: The bridge is located above the Rock Creek Rapids, a section of the creek that travels through the Fall Line. The line marks boundary between the bedrock of the Piedmont Plateau and the soft sediment of the Coastal Plain, a zone marked by falls and rapids along streams and rivers that cross it. Large boulders and outcroppings— predominantly boulder gneiss with the intrusion of granite gneisses, mica schist, and quartzite—have been exposed by eons of downcutting and erosion of the Rock Creek Valley. (Source: Swerdloff travelogues.)
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Boulder Bridge: Boulder Bridge is one of the oldest bridges in Rock Creek Park—many others from the park's early years have been washed out in floods and replaced with newer ones. This one, however, was clearly made to last. Built in 1902, it adheres to Romantic ideas that were in vogue with the Park Service at that time, that park fixtures should look "rustic" and take us back to a time and place far away. The bridge indeed does an outstanding job of both standing out architecturally and simultaneously blending in well with its surroundings. Technically, it is a Melan reinforced concrete bridge with a boulder facing; it spans 80 feet and rises 12 feet. The use of the large boulders on the bridge is quite unique. (Source: Streets of Washington Blog).
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Peirce Mill: The last extant 19th century gristmill in the District of Columbia, the mill is the principal relic of the Peirce Plantation and a symbol of the milling industry that once flourished along Rock Creek. Peirce Mill’s massive millstones and wooden gears were powered by water to produce wheat flour and corn meal for sale. Built in the 1820s by Isaac Peirce, the Mill operated commercially until 1897 when the wooden machinery failed and it was no longer economically feasible to produce flour on Rock Creek. After the National Park Service took over Rock Creek Park, a depression-era restoration project was undertaken in 1935 and the mill operated once again. During the 30s and 40s it supplied flour and meal to government cafeterias. Repairs were carried out in the 60s and again in the 70s to keep the mill operating but finally, in April 1993, the wooden waterwheel shaft failed and the machinery has not turned since then. (Source: Friends of Peirce Mill)
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Fish Ladder: Opened in 2007, this concrete structure allows fish to navigate upstream past the dam at Peirce Mill. It is part of an effort to remove barriers throughout the creek. The fish ladder is a series of steps that allow migratory fish, mainly herring, to climb upstream. Other sites where barriers have been removed include Milkhouse Ford and
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