The River Falls Back Door: Rethinking Your Fall Rotation On The C&O Canal

Most River Falls residents default to Great Falls Tavern when they want a canal walk. It is the closest signed entrance, it has the visitor center, and it is where guests want to be taken. For a homeowner who already lives adjacent to the towpath, that default is often the wrong one this time of year. The stretch of canal that sits within a ten-minute drive of Horseshoe Lane offers three distinct access points, and the one most residents skip is currently the most useful.

This is a piece about using the asset already at the edge of the neighborhood.

The Default, And What It Actually Costs

Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center is the marquee entry to this part of the C&O Canal National Historical Park. It is also the only nearby access that charges to park. The park collects an entrance fee at the Great Falls Tavern gate; other access points on this stretch do not. On a mild October Saturday, the lot fills early, and the pedestrian traffic on the boardwalk out to the Olmsted Island overlook is closer to a queue than a walk.

Two facts about Section A of the Billy Goat Trail matter here, and both are easy to forget until you are already parked. Dogs are not permitted on Section A, and they are not permitted on the boardwalk to the Great Falls overlook either. The trail itself is a 1.7-mile scramble on Bear Island with a fifty-foot rock face ascent above Mather Gorge, which is exhilarating in dry weather and a genuine problem after rain.

If you are bringing a dog, a stroller, out-of-town parents, or teenagers who want a real hike, Great Falls Tavern optimizes for none of those.

What Is Actually Open This Fall

The Billy Goat Trail runs in three separate sections that do not directly connect, joined only by the towpath itself. Understanding which section serves which visitor is the whole game.

Section B has been reported closed due to trail damage and erosion, which quietly changes the calculus for anyone who used to string A and B together. What remains fully open on the Maryland side, without a park fee, is Section C at Carderock. That is the section most River Falls residents have never actually done.

Carderock Is The Underused Answer

Carderock Recreation Area is a 100-acre unit of the same national park, entered from Clara Barton Parkway roughly a mile north of the Capital Beltway. It sits at canal milepost 10. There is no entrance fee. The parking lot is closer to River Falls than Great Falls Tavern is.

Three things are true about Carderock that are not true about the Tavern lot:

• The cliffs above the towpath are among the most-climbed in the eastern United States. The rock is Wissahickon mica schist, and the established routes run from about 25 to 60 feet, with over 100 climbs packed into roughly 200 yards of cliff line. Even for non-climbers, watching top-ropers work the slabs on a Saturday morning is its own event.
• Section C of the Billy Goat Trail circles the recreation area for 1.6 miles. It is the least demanding of the three sections and the only one that a mixed-ability group can do together without splitting up.
• There are picnic pavilions along the river, reservable through the National Park Service, that make an afternoon here more of a plan than a stop.

For a River Falls household with a dog, this is the answer to almost every fall weekend walking question. Leashed dogs are permitted on Section C. They are not permitted on Section A.

The Towpath Itself Is The Point

The three sections of the Billy Goat Trail are joined by the C&O Canal towpath, and that towpath is the flat, honest, all-ages part of this landscape. From the Carderock lot, you can walk upstream on the towpath and thread onto Section C's Billy Goat entry when you feel like leaving the flat. From the Old Angler's Inn lot across MacArthur Boulevard, you can walk the towpath upstream toward the Great Falls area without paying the vehicle entrance fee at all. That last route is a locally-known workaround worth remembering.

For a River Falls resident thinking about fall, the towpath's utility looks like this:

• A quick loop before dinner: Carderock lot, Section C, back to the car in an hour.
• A serious hike with a scramble: Park at Old Angler's Inn, walk the towpath upstream, connect to Section A near the Tavern, loop back on the towpath. You skip the park entrance fee this way and add a couple of miles.
• A flat walk with a stroller or an older parent: Any access point, stay on the towpath, turn around when you are ready.
• A dog walk: Carderock or the towpath from Old Angler's Inn. Not Section A. Not the Great Falls boardwalk.

The point is that the neighborhood's proximity to this park is not one entrance. It is a network of four decisions that produce four different afternoons.

The Landing Spot Has Not Changed

Old Angler's Inn sits at 10801 MacArthur Boulevard, across the road from the canal, and has been a Potomac tradition since 1860. It has been owned by the Reges family since 1957. The building itself started as a clubhouse for a private fishing society called the Order of the Golden Hook, burned in 1896, was rebuilt, and served as a private home, a post office, and a grocery store before settling into its current form.

What matters for a River Falls resident is the practical geometry. The parking lot across MacArthur from the Inn is a free canal-access lot, which means you can hike the towpath first and eat second without moving the car. The patio and firepit run through the shoulder seasons; the interior fireplaces take over once the weather turns. There is currently a Thursday wine offer running through December 31, 2026, worth checking against the restaurant directly rather than a third-party page.

A more casual routine that has held up for decades: Section C at Carderock, back to the car, a five-minute drive to Old Angler's, late lunch on the patio while the afternoon light does what it does through those trees.

Reading The Season

The towpath does not have a peak weekend. It has a pattern. Section A closes to unofficial use whenever the rocks are wet enough to be dangerous, which in October and November happens more often than most casual hikers plan for. The C&O Canal Trust and the National Park Service both publish current conditions, and the NPS conditions page is the one to check the morning of, not the night before.

Two seasonal notes that tend to catch River Falls newcomers:

1. The Great Falls Tavern lot is a fee lot even for a fifteen-minute stop. If you only want a short walk, Carderock or the Old Angler's lot avoids the transaction entirely.
2. Section B is not currently a reliable option. Plan around it. Do not plan on it.

For anyone new to the neighborhood, the River Falls Community Center on Horseshoe Lane still anchors the calendar with the Fourth of July parade, the Doggie Swim, and the Halloween trick-or-treating that reliably fills the streets. The canal is the other half of that calendar, and it is the half that runs quietly year-round without a signup sheet.

The Thesis, Stated Plainly

The stretch of C&O Canal at the southern edge of River Falls contains three trailheads, not one. The one everyone drives to is the most crowded, the most expensive to park at, the least dog-friendly, and, with Section B closed, no longer the most flexible. Carderock, ten minutes south on Clara Barton Parkway, is free, quieter, and offers the only Billy Goat section currently open to a mixed-ability group with a dog in tow. Old Angler's Inn remains the natural landing spot on the way home.

For a household that has lived here for a decade, this is a reminder to rotate. For a household that just closed on a River Falls colonial, this is the fall rotation, ready-made.

If you are weighing a move within the Potomac corridor and want a direct read on how a specific address relates to the canal, the school cluster, and the daily rhythms residents actually keep, Ted Duncan is available for a private conversation. Let's connect.