History
The trail runs on the abandoned right-of-way of the Georgetown Branch rail line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The rail line was partially built in 1892 and completed in 1910. It served Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO), the Washington Mill and Federal government buildings; but with the changing use of Georgetown's waterfront, became obsolete. Trains stopped running on the line in 1985.
In 1988, the Montgomery County Government purchased the right-of-way from the D.C. line to Silver Spring under the National Trails System Act of 1968. In 1990 the National Park Service purchased about 4.3 miles (6.9 km) of right-of-way in the District of Columbia from Georgetown to the D.C./Maryland boundary and developed the trail as a component of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. Volunteers built a wooden deck over the Arizona Avenue Railroad Bridge that year, and two years later that was replaced with a concrete deck. The 7-mile (11 km) paved section of the Capital Crescent Trail from Georgetown to Bethesda was built and formally dedicated in December 1996.
The trail continued to expand and improve. In 1996, a trail bridge was opened over busy River Road and the Dalecarlia Bridge opened. The Dalecarlia Bridge includes a component of a bridge which formerly took the Georgetown Branch over the Washington and Great Falls Electric Railway and it was designed to go over a road connecting two parts of the Washington Aqueduct reservation. On May 17, 1997, the Georgetown Branch Interim Trail, from the east side of the Air Rights Tunnel in Bethesda to Stewart Avenue in Silver Spring opened. On August 15, 1998, the Air Rights Tunnel in Bethesda (built in 1910) was opened to trail traffic, connecting the paved and unpaved portions. In June 2000, Montgomery County committed $1.3 million to repair the Rock Creek Trestle, which had been damaged by arson, and open it for trail use. The trestle was dedicated for trail use on May 31, 2003.
Read more about this topic: Capital Crescent Trail
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