Anacostia

Anacostia /ænəˈkɒstiə/ is a historic neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Its downtown is located at the intersection of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue. It is located east of the Anacostia River, after which the neighborhood is named. Like the other quadrants of Washington, D.C., Southeast encompasses a large number of named neighborhoods, of which Anacostia and Capitol Hill are the most well known. Anacostia includes all of the Anacostia Historic District that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Often the name Anacostia is incorrectly used to refer to the entire portion of the city that is southeast of the Anacostia River.

The name "Anacostia" comes from the anglicized name of a Nacochtank Native Americans settlement along the Anacostia River. Captain John Smith explored the area in 1608, traveling up the "Eastern Branch"—later the Anacostia River—mistaking it for the main body of the Potomac River, and met Anacostans. Before the arrival of whites, the Nacostine villages in this area were a lively center of trade visited by Native Americans such as the Iroquois of New York. Even after the founding of Maryland, Leonard Calvert, in a letter to a merchant in London, described "Anacostan" as one of the three best places in the colony for trading with natives.

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