The National Park Service announced Wednesday that it would remove Melvin Hazen’s name from the Rock Creek tributary and trail bisected by Connecticut Avenue, as well as the community garden on Sedgwick Street NW. The park was named sometime in the 1940s for Melvin C. Hazen, who was a DC Commissioner when he died in […]
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MLK weekend events include Peirce Mill, Melvin Hazen and Trail 9 cleanups
For the 12th year in a row, volunteers will spend the Martin Luther King holiday weekend sprucing up Rock Creek Park and its tributaries. Rock Creek Conservancy and the National Park Service are hosting several trash and invasive species removal events from Saturday, January 15th through Monday, January 17th. Volunteers will be picking up trash […]
Rock Creek Park deer management under way through March
The National Park Service begins a new Rock Creek Park “deer management” season at sundown, and its efforts to curb the park’s whitetail deer population will continue through March 2022. The hunters are U.S. Department of Agriculture biologists, which the Park Service says are also highly trained firearms experts. They are equipped with infrared heat […]
Round up invasive weeds at the first Rock Creek “Weed Wrangle” on Sept. 25
Saddle up, pardners. Volunteers are being deputized to round up some weedy invaders in and around Rock Creek Park. On Saturday, September 25th (which is also National Public Lands Day), the National Capital Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISM) and Rock Creek Conservancy are leading their first “Weed Wrangle,” during which volunteers will remove […]
A more colorful Connecticut Ave. and an easier trek on the Melvin Hazen trail after weekend volunteer work
Volunteers were busy in our neighborhood on Saturday. Van Ness Main Street: “Thank you to yesterday’s wonderful volunteers for helping us plant flowering pollinators in front of the small businesses along Connecticut Ave!” You’ll have more opportunities to pitch in over the next few weekends. Pollinator-friendly plantings are happening every Saturday and Sunday afternoon (weather […]
Do something nice for your wild neighbors: FrogWatch, watershed cleanups and pollinator plantings on tap
Our local parks and streams have given us places of respite and recreation in a stressful year. This spring we have several opportunities to return the favor. Events below include neighborhood and Rock Creek Park cleanups, wildflower planting, and a census of sorts for frogs. FrogWatch If you are familiar with Forest Hills Connection at […]
Neighborhood in the News: “Father of Black basketball” honored at UDC. And goodbye (maybe) to a “legendary” Burger King
“The father of Black basketball”: UDC is renaming its sports complex after Edwin B. Henderson, a 1904 graduate of Miner Teachers College, a predecessor of the university. “Henderson introduced the game of basketball on a large scale to African Americans in the District, earning him his nickname,” WUSA9 reports. He was also active in the […]
On March 4th, learn more about the man behind Melvin C. Hazen Park – and the people he helped displace at Fort Reno Park
For decades as a city surveyor, Melvin C. Hazen had a vision for Tenleytown, which included a park at Fort Reno. Standing in his way – a community of Black people that had settled there after the Civil War. The Reno neighborhood was a nearly forgotten casualty of government and developer efforts to remake this […]
This MLK weekend, do something good for the national park in our backyard
Rock Creek Park has been an oasis for many of us during the long months of the pandemic. This weekend is a good time to return the favor. The Martin Luther King Day of Service is usually Rock Creek Conservancy’s second largest cleanup event of the year (after the springtime Extreme Cleanup). This time, a […]
Practice “socially-distant stewardship” at Melvin C Hazen Park bamboo cleanups this month
Rock Creek Conservancy is in what it calls “socially-distant stewardship mode.” That doesn’t mean its work has stopped. This month, the group is inviting volunteers to help attack a stand of invasive bamboo in the western section of Melvin C Hazen Park. “Bamboo is an aggressive invasive plant that can overtake wildlife habitats and out-compete […]