[2] The headwater of the stream originates in the Coral Hills area of Prince George's County near Francis Scott Key Elementary School.

It first flows through Coral Hills to a stormwater management pond near Seton Way, where it combines with water from a storm drainpipe that empties the Penn Station Shopping Center parking lot.

[4] South of Pennsylvania Ave, it runs along the edge of Cedar Hill and Lincoln Memorial cemeteries before passing through a strip of parkland including Suitland Parkway and Oxon Run Valley Park at the same time passing under the Suitland Parkway at Naylor Road and then under Southern Avenue, into D.C.[5] Once in D.C., the stream flows through parkland.

After passing under South Capitol Street, it flows through a natural channel between NPS's forested Bald Eagle Hill and a former landfill site owned by D.C. Just inside the D.C. Boundary, it meets with Barnaby Run and becomes Oxon Creek.

Until the 20th century, the Oxon Run watershed was a lightly settled valley filled with plantations, farms, and orchards.

The U.S. Army built forts on the hills above Oxon Run, and the expansion of the population of the city led to the extension of formal roads into the valley.

In the 1920s, Congress took steps to preserve much of the green space outside the old city of Washington, with a special focus on the stream and river valleys, including Oxon Run.

[14] By 1930, NCPPC had begun purchasing narrow strips of land along the shores of the stream for the "Oxon Run Parkway."

[15] After a 1937 flood of Oxon Run, NCPPC decided to widen the parkway by purchasing more land in the valley between the District line and the Camp Simms rifle range.

In 1958, the Defense Department transferred the land to the General Services Administration, and later 94 acres of the site was added to the Oxon Run Parkway.

Sections near the Potomac and along Cedar Hill and Lincoln Memorial Cemeteries were channelized before World War II.

[4] More recently, in 1995, WMATA stabilized and realigned the channel near the Suitland Parkway to allow construction of the piers for the Naylor Road Station.

The last transportation development in the valley was the final section of Metro's Green Line from Congress Heights to Branch Avenue, which WMATA built from 1995 to 2001.

At the same time, the land between 13th and Southern Avenue remained the Oxon Run Parkway under the management of the National Park Service.

[43] Oxon Run is in a highly urbanized area, and its water quality has been rated as poor by government agencies.

The stream has been polluted by stormwater runoff, dumped trash, sewer leaks, and contamination from an old firing range and an unlined landfill.