Anacostia Tributary Trails

The Anacostia Tributary Trail System (ATTS) is a unified and signed system of stream valley trails joining the Northwest Branch, Northeast Branch, Indian Creek and Paint Branch stream valley parks, set aside and maintained by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

ATTS is a part of the East Coast Greenway, a 3,000 mile long system of trails connecting Maine to Florida.

The system includes several hiker-biker trails, primarily: the Northeast Branch Trail, the Northwest Branch Trail, and the Paint Branch Trail; all of which are in Prince George's County. The trail system also includes the Sligo Creek Trail, which extends approximately 9 miles (14.3 km) into Montgomery County. The majority of the routes consist of protected stream valley parks established by M-NCPPC in the 1930s.

The trail system converges on a zero milepost in Hyattsville in an area known as Port Towns, named after the former deepwater port of Bladensburg at the head of the Anacostia River, where the various tributaries converge.

The area covered by the trails corresponds with the coastal plain section of the Anacostia watershed, which consists of wide floodplains that were reserved for parkland and flood-control by the Army Corps of Engineers, using a system of levees and concrete embankments upon which the trails were initially built. In conjunction with the restoration of natural habitat along the adjoining stream valleys in the 1990s, M-NCPPC and Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation connected and upgraded the stream valley trails into a consistent network of approximately 24 miles (39 km) of paved 6–10-foot-wide (1.8–3.0 m) off-road paths.

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