The road follows a northwest–southeast route from the Great Falls area of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park in Potomac, Maryland, to Foxhall Road NW and 44th Street NW in the Foxhall neighborhood of Washington, D.C., near the Georgetown Reservoir.

MacArthur Boulevard runs parallel to the Clara Barton Parkway and the C&O Canal for most of its route, passing through the Palisades area of the District.

[1] In 1975, a bike path, the MacArthur Boulevard Bike Trail, was built along MacArthur Boulevard from Berma Road to the south driveway for the Defense Mapping Agency Topographic Center (DMATC), a short distance from the District line.

[3] In 2013, the county began a project to rebuild the road and bikeway to make it safer and more pleasant.

The project widened the existing road by four feet (1.2 m) to provide three-foot (0.91 m) bike lanes in each direction and rebuild the bikeway with a five-foot-wide (1.5 m) vegetative buffer.