Your Guide to D.C.’s Urban Oasis

But there was only one park where Joyner ’99 could see himself as superintendent: Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.—and in 2024, his vision became reality. The Prince George’s County native and former history major treasures the park for the natural experience it offers just blocks from the hubbub of city life.

“You can walk from a neighborhood and be knee-deep in a 1,750-acre forest with a running creek and craggy cliffs that resemble something you might see out west,” he says. “We have one of everything,” from a professional-level tennis venue to the historic (though now closed) Carter Barron Amphitheater to 42 miles of trails and paths.

The gems of Rock Creek Park extend beyond those in its nearly 3 square miles of wooded terrain. An additional 1,300 acres of parks, parkways, forts and more extending like tentacles throughout Northwest Washington also fall under the park’s jurisdiction.

Wearing the forest green blazer and broad, flat-brimmed hat made oh-so-chic by NPS rangers, Joyner gave Terp a tour of a few highlights.

Since 2012, volunteers have cared for two dozen apple and pear trees on a small patch of land near the historic Peirce Mill. Some of the varieties are the same ones that Joshua Peirce, who owned the Peirce plantation and its mill, advertised in an 1824 catalogue of fruit trees available from his nursery business.

Since 1956, this green-and-white building sitting on park land has been home to a functioning congregation, though services are now mostly held online.

The site of the only Civil War battle within D.C.’s borders, it’s where 57 troops died July 11-12, 1864, in a victory for the Union. Forty soldiers are buried in nearby Battleground National Cemetery, also part of Rock Creek Park.

Six fall under the auspices of the park. Some, like Grant Circle and Sherman Circle, have their own small parks within the rotary. “During COVID, all those green spaces became incredibly valuable to communities,” says Joyner. “What were only traffic circles a few years ago—and we started to light to make sure cars didn’t run through them—became more active spaces.”

A structure playfully known as Herring Highway helps river herring, shad and alewife bypass a dam built in 1904 that blocks their annual journey to their spawning grounds. The fish can jump up the ladder’s series of small, water-filled steps one at a time.