Quartz and gnessis rock.....................the quartz from Namibia, West Africa..............the gnessis from Sri Lanka are in the same room as the Hope diamond........

History[edit]

In prehistoric times, the creek's valley was a source of quartzite cobbles for toolmaking. One quarry site is located at the bluffs overlooking Piney Branch from the north, about 30 feet below the summit of a southeast-facing hill. Dubbed the Piney Branch Quarry Site, it was first examined by archeologist William Henry Holmes in 1889 and 1890. Another investigation begin in 2006 revealed quartzite debitage, whole and broken turtleback “preforms,” and half of a large ax.^[2]

In the mid-1800s, the creek's valley was the location of the first road through the area that would become Rock Creek Park. Called Piney Branch Road or 14th Street Road, the narrow country way went north from the Mount Pleasant neighborhood down into the valley, across a rickety bridge just west of today's 16th Street Bridge, then climbed up to the present-day neighborhood of Crestwood.^[3]

Funding to build the Piney Branch Parkway, which runs along the creek for most of its length, was "authorized in 1907, but not built until the mid-1930s when funding and workers became available through the New Deal."^[3]

In 2014, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority began design work on the Piney Branch Trunk Sewer Rehabilitation Project, a series of repairs and improvements to thecombined sewer and storm sewer system that discharges into the creek. Composed of 8- to 10-foot brick and concrete pipes, the Piney Branch Trunk Sewer is one of the city’s major trunk sewers. Project design was slated to start in January 2014 and last one year.^[4]