A hot topic in the DMV right now is the coming together of planners in Alexandria and Arlington to develop dovetailing strategies in the wake of the arrival of Amazon’s HQ2. Although the majority of the office space will be in Arlington, Alexandria got a few slices of the pie, too.
We thought it might be helpful, especially to our newcomers, to talk about the history of the land where the company is setting up shop.
First of all, let’s nail down exactly where the workers will be located. Because the offices are in parts of Crystal City and Pentagon City (Arlington) and Potomac Yard (Alexandria), some confusion of the precise location remains for the less informed.
To the rescue is this nifty map prepared by the New Haven Register. As you can see, this axe-shaped part of Alexandria and Arlington (some might say that is appropriate), is south of the Pentagon and west of National Airport.
What the novice can’t see is where Alexandria ends and Arlington begins. Fortunately, it’s easy. The eastern most boundary between the two is Four Mile Run, that ribbon of blue running across the screen and flowing into the Potomac River south of National Airport.
Cyclists and walkers have a fondness for Four Mile Run, but what many folks may not know is that this body of water can tell us a lot about the history of this part of the area. Let's take a look.
The first roads in the colony of Virginia were the rivers and their feeders. The native Americans, who were the original watermen, fished and ate off this bounty. When they arrived, the planters built their homes overlooking the rivers. Their wharfs dotted the landscape, the place where the tall ships sailed in, discharged the merchant goods, and picked up the hogsheads of tobacco for the markets in the Old World.
In the first part of the eighteenth century, when the northward push of the tidewater planters began to arrive in this part of the colony, Four Mile Run served as one of the few place identifiers in what became this part of Alexandria and Arlington. In his oldie but goodie research, Charles W. Stetson tells us the name Four Mile Creek was used as early as 1694 on land records. Four Mile Creek or Four Mile Run was labeled on maps as early as 1737 (Robert Brooke’s, “A plan of Patomack River)” and 1747 (“A Survey of the Northern Neck of Virginia, being the lands of the Rt. Honorable Thomas Lord Fairfax”).
Note: The Fairfax Northern Neck Grant included what we know today as the Northern Neck and northern Virginia.
Whence Four Mile Run got its name is muddy waters. Educated guesses have pointed to either a faded sign (Flour Mill Run), the distance (actually about 10), or the favorite as stated by Stetson. In his presentation before the Columbia Society in 1932, he said - “It was the first considerable estuary above Great Hunting Creek and was about four miles north of it.”
Four Mile Run is not very wide, but it can take us deep into the history of this part of the Washington region. George Washington’s diary tells us he used the term a good number of times, including his 1774 purchase of a 1,200 acre tract of land from James and George Mercer. The modern day equivalent of this tract is south of Barcroft in Arlington, and southward across Route 7 into Alexandria.
This land later became known as the “Washington Forest.” Always a stickler for accuracy, Washington got on his horse a number of times and rode to his property to check his survey points and look for squatters.
In 1746, three years before Alexandria was founded as a seaport two miles south of Four Mile Run, Daniel Jennings prepared a “Survey of Robert Howson’s 6,000 acre patent.” It shows the “Howson Tract,” a shelf of woodland east of the Fall Line and lying between a spine of hills and the Potomac River. These lands on both sides of Four Mile Run became the easternmost portions of Alexandria and Arlington which include Old Town, Potomac Yard, Crystal City and Pentagon City. Early research thought Howson to be a Welsh sea captain, but this may not be the case. Either way, Howson gained title to these lands as payment for bringing immigrants to the part of the New World.
Histories of Alexandria sometimes begin in 1669, the year John Alexander (1603-1677) acquired this tract of land from Howson. Alexander came from Scotland, a country that gave Alexandria a good number of its first residents and a pride seen every December with the Scottish parade in Old Town. Alexander lived in Chotank, a riverside establishment about ten miles upstream from where George Washington would be born on the Northern Neck.
In a complicated twist we can’t explain here, Margaret Brent (1601-) also owned a smaller portion of the land that would become Alexandria. In 1638 she landed on the Maryland shore in a British ship. An obvious minority, Brent had to fight for her rights as a landowner and lawyer. With the overlap, Alexander had to pay twice for that part of his holdings.
It’s worth pointing out that, as it does today for Alexandria and Fairfax County, Great Hunting Creek was the southern divider for what became Alexandria. Its mouth was much wider then and its waters deep enough to float ships a mile or so inland to the village of Cameron (roughly, modern day Telegraph Road and the Beltway).
Seven years before Alexandria was founded in 1749, Fairfax County came into being. As seen on Beth Mitchell’s 1760 map, Fairfax County included all of northern Virginia. In 1801, Virginia officially ceded Alexandria and the future land of Arlington to the new District of Columbia. That land became Alexandria County, north and west of Alexandria. Virginia re-gained these lands in 1848. Remnants remain, including a down pipe in Old Town marked with “Alexandria, DC.” A number of boundary stones used to mark the Federal District can be found in both Alexandria and Arlington. The ceremonial first one was laid in what is now Jones Point Park, the southeastern tip of Alexandria.
In the days before Alexandria was founded at a crescent-shaped bay about two miles south of Four Mile Run, placing a location was a relative thing. For example, Hugh West’s tobacco warehouses, located at modern day foot of Oronoco Street in Old Town, were initially referred to as the warehouses at Great Hunting Creek. This has probably confused people through the years because West’s Point is about a mile north of Great Hunting Creek.
In the 1730s, John Alexander’s great grandsons inherited what had been the Howson Tract. South of Four Mile Run went to John Alexander (1711-1775). The Jenkins survey shows his dwelling located just south of the creek. The modern day equivalent is somewhere near the Barnes and Noble in Potomac Yard and within shouting distance of where Virginia Tech will built its new Innovation Campus overlooking Four Mile Run.
North of Four Mile Run went to Gerard Alexander (1712-1761). He lived in and probably built Abingdon (circa 1746), a landmark plantation home just north of Four Mile Run. Its historic site was saved in the 1990s, a win-win that sandwiched the ruins between the two large parking lots at National Airport. If you have a few minutes to spare before or after a flight, it’s quite the novel experience.
In 1778, John “Jackie” Parke Custis, Martha Washington’s only son and George’s adopted son, acquired Abingdon. In the distance southward, they could see the tall ships sailing in and out of Alexandria. The Georgian homes that dotted the seaport bespoke of the good times. For business and pleasure, George Washington visited the town many times. By the turn of the century, Alexandria had become the seventh largest port.
Washington scolded Jackie for paying too much for Abingdon, but he no doubt enjoyed the convenient location. The mansion home was roughly halfway between Mount Vernon and Mount Airy, the Maryland home of Eleanor Calvert, Jackie’s wife, and her family.
Eleanor gave birth to four children - Eliza Parke Custis (1776-1831), Martha Parke Custis (1777-1854), Eleanor (Nellie) Parke Custis (1779-1850) and George Washington Parke Custis (1781-1857). They each spent their first or earliest years living at Abingdon.
One can learn quite a bit through the lens of these four step grandchildren of George Washington. For example, their footprints are all over three of the most famous historic mansion museums in the DMV.
The county of Arlington gets its name from Arlington House, the Greek Revival mansion George Washington Parke Custis completed as a shrine to his step grandfather in 1818. It seems likely the name of the house came from the Custis family ancestral home, Arlington, whose site is in Cape Charles, Virginia.
The source of that one’s naming is up for grabs. Lord Arlington was a family friend. More is known about Arlington Row, a set of limestone cottages built in the fourteenth century in Bilbury Parish. Captain John Custis (b. 1592), high above George Washington Parke Custis on the family tree, is thought to have been born in Bilbury Parish. The great grandson of Captain John Custis is John Custis IV (1678-1749) who is buried at Arlington in Cape Charles. His son was Daniel Parke Custis who married Martha Dandridge. After he died, the wealthy widowed Martha married George Washington.
As a wedding gift to Eleanor and Lawrence Lewis, George Washington built Woodlawn, the impressive Federal style home is tucked away in woods overlooking Route One near Fort Belvoir.
Martha and her husband lived in Tudor Place, one of Georgetown’s finest examples of the Federal style and also financed by George Washington.
After all those years of use for agriculture, the land above and below Four Mile Run became a transportation corridor. Getting to and from Alexandria and the new Federal capital was made a bit easier with the construction of the Washington and Alexandria Turnpike in 1808. Its basic course followed where Route One runs today.
Joining the turnpike was the Alexandria Canal, which had a modest heyday hauling coal from the 1840s to the 1870s. The canal ran along the western edge of modern day Potomac Yard and crossed over Four Mile Run at a unique x-shaped bridge/tunnel where the railroad went through. Before connecting with the C&O Canal at Georgetown, the Alexandria Canal went along what became South Eads Street in Arlington. This is where Amazon will build two new tall buildings between 13th and 15th in Pentagon City.
The competition to win the coveted prize of landing Amazon’s HQ2 was a fierce one. 270 years ago there was another fierce competition to land a coveted prize. This one determined where a new tobacco port and town would be located below the Fall Line of the Potomac.
Two main groups petitioned the House of Burgess. One wanted the location to be the village of Cameron. Perhaps archaeology near the Eisenhower Avenue Metro will someday uncover its wharfs.
The ultimate winner was a coalition of powerful men in Fairfax County who had touted a crescent-shaped bay located a mile north of Great Hunting Creek. In the early 1740s, Hugh West had constructed a couple of tobacco warehouses at what would become known as West’s Point at the foot of Oronoco Street.
The lineup for this group was a who’s who of influentials in Fairfax County, including Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax and Lawrence Washington (George Washington’s half brother and the son-in-law of Colonel William Fairfax, cousin of Thomas).
What made the difference in the decision will probably be never known. It does give us a great “What If?” Had the Cameron site been chosen, silting would have doomed it as a seaport. Dumfries and Colchester suffered from this fate.
At first, it appeared the Cameron site would be chosen, Philip Alexander did not want to sell his land. It has been suggested that in order to “sweeten the pot” of the sale, the Fairfax County group agreed to name the town Alexandria.
Whatever the case, Alexandria was founded in 1749, and took off like a rocket as a seaport. In one of the Washington region's first major re-development projects, landfill in the 1780s created the straight line of shore seen today. A zip through Alexandria's long history starts with an initial golden era of international shipping and ship making. Helping to forge a new chapter after the Civil War were the iron horses of the railroads and manufacturing.
In the first part of the twentieth century, Potomac Yard, one of the nation's largest freight transfer operations, put paychecks in pockets and bustled with activity. After years of being contained to the oldest part of the city at what is now mostly Old Town, the City annexed its way more than five miles to the west. Four Mile Run formed some of the northern boundary.
In 1920, the name Arlington County was adopted on land that been called Alexandria County (mostly north of Four Mile Run). At that time, the land that is now Crystal City and Pentagon City was mostly a gritty landscape of brickyards and junkyards, and merely a place to pass by on the way to and from the job in Washington.
Closer to that spine of hills, what became known as the Aurora Highlands neighborhood sprung up. Initial praise included The Washington Post calling it, “the garden suburb of Virginia Highlands.” Beginning around 1894, residents used the Washington, Alexandria, and Mount Vernon Electric Railway line, which was part of the area’s first mass transit system. Long time residents there will tell you they remember when they could see the full flight of planes taking off from and landing at National Airport.
The Washington, Alexandria and Mount Vernon Electric Railway moved hundreds of thousands of people, but the coming of the cars signaled its demise. The paving of Washington-Richmond Highway, which was part of the predecessor of Route One, was a big deal. With everybody a captain behind the steering wheel, more bridges were needed across the Potomac. One of them was the Arlington Memorial Bridge. It opened in the bicentennial year of 1932 and symbolically linked the Lincoln Memorial with the Arlington House high above on the hill.
Then came the Pentagon and National Airport in the 1940s, forever changing the landscape of that part of Arlington. In 1954, the United States Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial) was unveiled. In 1958, Arlington House officially opened as a museum. Five years later, the nation, watching on TV, cast its eyes on Arlington in numbers never before seen. Ever so sadly, the reason was the laying to rest of President Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.
Mirroring what was happening in Montgomery and Prince George's County, the population of Fairfax County kept from 98,000 to 275,000 in 1960 and 455,000 in 1970. Land values in this part of Arlington began to rise as the suburban sprawl increased commute times to painful proportions. Named for a chandelier placed in the lobby of one of the new residential buildings, Crystal City sprung up with tall buildings rarely seen southward in Alexandria. After a late afternoon swim, a resident could pull up a chair on the balcony, sip a drink, and watch the commuter hell below them.
Arlington attracted visitors, but according to a travel-development story in 1974, some didn’t know they were in Arlington. As part of a tourism campaign, a number of Arlington signs went up on the major roads.
The county continued to work hard. It became a place that would earn accolades for progressive planning. Arlington began to show up on lists such as Best Places to Live. In recent years, both Crystal City and Pentagon City have emerged as places with great appeal for those who want walkable urban landscapes and a variety of mass transit options. A Metro ride from Crystal City to L'Enfant Plaza takes just ten minutes. Long Bridge Park has blossomed into a jewel. Eyeing the future, look for the roll out of Short Bridge Park at Four Mile Run. This will bring the Alexandria and Arlington in ways never seen before as the land belongs to both.
And so, another chapter in the history of these lands is being written. Our advice to the newcomer is to think larger picture, DMV, and not get hung up on place names such as “East of,” terms that can be divisive. Enjoy the bounty of history and nature, and be sure and take a walk along Four Mile Run.
Maps
1. Google, New Haven Register
2. 1736-37 map of the Northern Neck Proprietary, Library of Congress
3. Howson Patent, Survey Showing Land Ownership, 1741, Library of Congress, edited for Interpretive Marker at Potomac Yard
4. Fairfax County, Interpretive Map, 1760, Beth Mitchell
5. Atlas of Fifteen Miles Around Washington, G.M. Hopkins, 1878, Library of Congress, Edited for Interpretive Marker at Potomac Yard
6. Aerial, 1966, Historic Aerials, $12 paid.
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