Isaac Peirce built Peirce Mill in the 1820s, and Rock Creek Park's one thousand seven hundred fifty-four acres of forested valley run past it. It is larger than Central Park in Manhattan, and nearly all of it is old-growth forest.
Rock Creek itself was noted by John Smith as early as 1608, when he explored the Chesapeake Bay region and mapped its tributaries. The creek runs from Maryland south through this park and empties into the Potomac.
Peirce Mill was built in the 1820s by Isaac Peirce, a Quaker farmer who operated it as a gristmill for the surrounding community. It ground grain into flour for farms from Georgetown to Bethesda for over fifty years. The millstone, the wooden wheel, the millrace — the channel that diverts water to power the wheel — are all preserved here.
Rock Creek Park was established in 1890, one of the first national parks created specifically to preserve natural land within a city. Congress purchased the land partly because wealthy residents of nearby neighborhoods feared the valley would be developed into factories and tenements.
Theodore Roosevelt was a passionate hiker who walked Rock Creek's trails during his presidency, often taking military aides on what he called point-to-point hikes — scrambles straight through the forest regardless of terrain. European diplomats sometimes felt obliged to join him, struggling to keep up in their embassy clothes.
The creek still runs cold and clear. Deer walk through the forest at dusk. In the center of a city of monuments and marble, this forest has been here longer than the city itself.