The hidden Anacostia

Beauty. Bounty. Promise. Opportunity. Long ago, those words defined the Anacostia River. And to a faithful few, they still do.

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A rower heads south on the Anacostia River near Langston Golf Course in Washington. Long ago, the Nacotchtank Indians lived in the area for 10,000 years.

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A bridge for golf carts on Langston Golf Course crosses the Anacostia River. In a journal of his 1608 voyage up the Chesapeake Bay into the Potomac and Anacostia, explorer John Smith said the region was fed by “innumerable sweet and pleasant springs.”

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Explorer Henry Fleet recorded the mouth of the river as “Nacostine,” meaning village trading center. It was eventually Anglicized as "Anacostia." Clear-cutting and pollution contributed to the river’s decline.

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A blue, gooey substance collects on silt at low tide along the shores of the Anacostia River.

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Trash and debris along the Anacostia River near Nationals Stadium.

Linda Davidson / THE WASHINGTON POST

Trash and debris along the Anacostia River near Nationals Stadium.

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English importer Christopher Lowndes built his Bostwick mansion in 1746 near the port in Bladensburg. Today it’s one of the city’s oldest buildings. By the 18th century, the Anacostia was so clogged with silt and debris that deep-water boats could no longer make it to Bladensburg.

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Photographer Bruce McNeil uses photography and Photoshop to interpret a more idyllic version of Anacostia River.

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McNeil photographed inside his own artwork.

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Activist Robert Boone at his home in College Park. In the late 1980s, he began exploring the Anacostia, and by age 47, he was looking for a purpose. He took a job with the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, focusing on the Anacostia; few people cared about the river then, he says. He founded the Anacostia Watershed Society in 1989.

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Boone waters his organic garden. "He said [the Anacostia] would be livable and fishable," says Mardell Moffett, associate director of the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, a longtime AWS donor. "He has so much charisma and so much passion. He was not going to let anyone tell him no."

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Boone helped create the annual Anacostia cleanup that now involves nearly 30 groups. "It's a remembered river," he says. "It's a river on the mend."

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Lavette Spears, with Mr. Hoots, a Eurasian eagle-owl, gained a new appreciation for the Anacostia while working with the Earth Conservation Corp, which trains endangered young people to help an endangered river.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

"Everything changed," says Spears, 21, of her time with the corps, when she worked with raptors and helped teach children about the Anacostia. "It was like a shot in the head. I realized I needed that river."

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Spears along the debris-littered shores of the Anacostia River. The corps' members — unemployed youths who live in some of the poorest communities along the river — have gathered more than 600 bags of trash there in the past year.

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Spears and her nephew Andre Brown, 5, show her mentor Kellie Bolinder their playful Jack Russell terrier at home in Washington. Spears dropped out of Friendship Collegiate Academy in Northeast at age 19.

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Spears shows off her tattoos: A water drop with wings signifies a near-drowning at age 10, but also her work with the corps. The sparrow represents change.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

Spears holds one of many numerous rocks she collects as gifts for her mentor at the Earth Conservation Corps. After graduating from the program, Spears began an internship with DC Water.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

Spears removes ivy on a chain-link fence that borders DC Water property.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

Aldo García, left, and Miguel Vargas display their day’s haul along the Anacostia. Vargas, from Mexico, and García, from Honduras, work at a recycling plant in Baltimore during the week. On Sundays, they fish. “I come to pass a tranquil time,” García says.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

The men nab a catfish. In addition to a fishing rod and reel, their gear consists of bottles, beverage cans and fishing line. Later they would bring fish to a friend’s house to cook a large dinner. Vargas and García usually eat the fish they catch on the Anacostia — despite a city health advisory that states: “Do not eat: Catfish, carp or eel.”

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

Vargas and García show their catch to others. Federal studies have found elevated levels of PCBs — industrial chemicals linked to cancer — in some Anacostia catfish. But the men have never heard of anyone getting sick. The water is dirtier back home, and people eat the fish there.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

Charles Martin, a longtime boat lover, helped found the Seafarers Yacht Club, one of the nation’s oldest black yacht clubs.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

In 2004, Alexandria accountant Duane Deason bought a half-acre between the headquarters of the U.S. Coast Guard and a string of industrial and semi-abandoned structures. "I just felt like waterfront property would eventually pay off," Deason says. So far, it hasn't. "People say no one ever went broke on waterfront property, right?" he says. "Well, I'll have to get back to you on that."

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

Deason's plans for a 97-unit apartment building were recently approved by the D.C. Zoning Commission. Now he has to find the money.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

Congress has appropriated $130 million to clean up sewage overflows into the river over the past decade. “The spirit and the soul of it are still there,” says Gabrielle Tayac, a historian at the National Museum of the American Indian. “Even with it getting clouded and choked and so deeply abused. There’s something underlying it all that can’t be erased.”

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

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