One of the things that fascinates me are places that hold some history, but are overlooked or seldom visited. One such tucked away place is located in Woodbridge, south of the Occoquan River and west of Route One. Railroad Avenue, Colchester Ferry Place and Potomac Path Drive of the Belmont Bay neighborhood hint at some of the forgotten history there.
Before we get rolling, a tip of the hat to two main sources —Prince William County (map) drawn by Eugene Scheel (1992) and “Along the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR” by William E. Griffin, Jr. Also, a big thank you to Steven B. Shwartzman and his book, “Fortunate Son, Thomas Mason of Woodbridge.”
The Potomac Path starts this story, the colonial road (later known as the King’s Highway) the Virginia planters and others took to get from the Northern Neck to points northward. Their seventeenth century forebears had not been interested in travel, and were annoyed when anyone crossed their plantation fields or wanted them to build a road.
But the dependency on tobacco continued to wear out the fields. Slowly, the gentry moved further and further away from Williamsburg and into the northern part of the colony. In the second half of the seventeenth century, speculators acquired thousands of acres on or near Mason Neck and Great Hunting Creek. One of the biggest purchase was made by Robert Howsing in 1669, 6,000 acres that would become land we now call Old Town Alexandria, Potomac Yard, Crystal City and Pentagon City.
This movement led to the founding of Prince William County in 1731. A marker at the corner of Route One and Annapolis Way tells us the first courthouse of the county stood 150 yards to the east. That would put its site near the end of Colchester Ferry Place, a quiet place away from the rush of cars on Route One.
Note: It appears this marker was removed for current construction.
We know very little about the courthouse, but the book “Prince William: A Past to Preserve” tells us a jail, pillory and stocks were also built beside the courthouse. In his book, “The Courthouses of Early Virginia,” Carl P. Lounsbury notes the Prince William justices did not always bother to travel the far away distance. Nevertheless, courthouses were critical to the needs of the people and were “symbolic manifestations of the authority” of the gentry and justices.
Putting a courthouse in a far corner of a new county might seem like an odd thing to do. But as Donald Swieg explains (“Fairfax County, Virginia, A History”), the location of the courthouse made it easier for those wanting to ride and examine the lands north of the Occoquan. A land boom led to the founding of Fairfax County in 1742, Alexandria in 1749 and Colchester in 1753.
Before it got to the Occoquan River, the Potomac Path skirted past many a shallowing creek that fed into the Potomac. But as the Indigenous peoples knew, the Fall Line had created a gorge at the Occoquan. Its waters did not thin out until a point well upstream. Or as Edith Moore Spouse put it, the “Occoquan was no gentle stream.” Given this lay of the land, there was no choice but to establish ferry service.
The Mason family had a presence in this part of the colony. Thomas Mason, the youngest son of George Mason of Gunston Hall, lived at a plantation south of the Occoquan. Very little is known about it, but Steven B. Shwartzman (“Fortunate Son: Thomas Mason of Woodbridge) shines some light. He tells us Thomas Mason would have built his home on the highest ground available. Its site could very well be where the Potomac Path approached the Occoquan. Richard R. Mason later placed an ad in the Alexandria Gazette. It described Woodbridge as the residence of the late Gerard Mason. “It lies on the Occoquan River immediately opposite the village of Colchester and contains 500 acres of land.”
Mason also operated a ferry. Nothing visible remains, but in 1929, "The Rambler," a reporter for the Evening Star, found remains of a stone house near what is now a sanitary sewer pump just to the north of the end of Colchester Ferry Way. Shwartzman hopes any future surveys there might identify the ferry house as well as the county courthouse. Old Colchester Road ends at the Occoquan and gives one the sense of the Potomac Path.
Ferry service began at this location in 1684. Thomas Mason was the fifth generation of Mason’s to operate the service. One of his customer’s was George Washington. In his book, “The Nine Lives of George Washington,” William Betts, Jr. writes about an incident there in 1791. Four of George Washington’s horses slipped off the deck, but the carriage managed to stay on.
A wooden toll bridge built in 1795 and replaced the ferry service. Shwartzman gives an informative account. He believes Timothy Palmer may have designed the span. It went up around the same time as a wooden bridge at Little Falls. A chain bridge replaced it, so we know the current span as Chain Bridge near Georgetown.
Mason’s bridge made it easier to cross the Occoquan, but heavy rains and flood waters wiped it out in 1807. In some ways, this opened the door for Occoquan, located about a mile upstream. John Ballendine had helped put the village on the map in the 1750s when he built two mills and a commodious stone home there. Already prosperous, Occoquan gained the passenger and mail business.
Woodbridge was never incorporated into a town like Occoquan. But some rail buffs there might have jumped for joy in 1872 when passengers on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac could finally ride the rails all the way from Fredericksburg to Washington. Previously, they disembarked at Aquia (later Quantico) and boarded a steamer to Washington.
Part of that ride was the first rail bridge over the Occoquan just west of where Mason’s ferry had taken passengers over to Colchester. H.K. Bradshaw of Alexandria built the trestle structure. Griffin, quoting the Gazette, tells us a “goodly gathering of the citizens of Prince William County and a number of fair ladies” were on hand.
Newspaper accounts show some activities at Woodbridge in the 1880s. A horse race track was located at the station. Baseball games were played and political gatherings held. W.D. Clarke ran a store. Republicans, supported by African Americans, gathered in Occoquan, while Democrats (conservative) rallied in Woodbridge.
The torrents of rain waters returned in 1889 and damaged the bridge. The Southern Railway rebuilt it in 1892 with a metal Pratt truss.
The bridge one sees now was completed in 1915 by the RF&P. Nathaniel Lee tells us more about it in his book, “The Iron Road of Franconia.” Designed by the famed Gustav Lindenthal in the “Parker through truss” style, the 920-foot span was “the largest single feat of engineering undertaken by the railroad company in Fairfax County.” Other examples across the country are dwindling in number.
Lee reminds us such structures are works of public art and that the bridge is on the Fairfax County Inventory of Historic Sites. It is used by CSXT, Amtrak and VRE and a DC2RVA report points out it is eligible for listing in the NRHP.
Around the time the new bridge was built in 1915, a couple of homes (13221 built in 1913 and 13221 built in 1913) also sprung up near the station on Railroad Avenue. They joined 13215 (1901), 13209 (1910) and 13217 (1913). Historic aerials also show a row of structures on the west side of the tracks. The houses remain but the other structures slowly went away.
The site of the railroad station is just to the east of the tracks near the VRE station. As Griffin points out, the station was alternately known as both Woodbridge and Occoquan. The station to the south at Cherry Hill was Myron and to the north was the Long Branch Station at Newington.
More excitement came to this part of the county in 1927 when the Washington-Richmond highway (Route One) was completed. Instead of a new bridge being built, the metal bridge built in 1892 for the railroad was converted for vehicle traffic. Prior to the new highway, motorists used an out of the way course of Old Colchester Road, Furnace Road underneath the railroad tracks to Lorton Road and then to Ox Road where they crossed over the Occoquan at Occoquan. Another way used Lorton Road.
In 1941, the Route One highway bridge was widened. In 1957, a front page story for the Richmond Dispatch told readers about 9 injured in a head-on collision on the bridge. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes damaged some of the bridge. A temporary bridge was built and became the southbound span in 1981.
Automobiles made captains and conductors of every driver behind the steering wheel. Passenger numbers on the RF&P declined after World War II. The company announced plans to dismantle a half dozen stations in 1952, including Woodbridge. It’s no coincidence that Shirley Highway was completed that same year.
In the second half of the century, Woodbridge continued to grow as a bedroom community and census designated place. Visit Prince William notes: “Woodbridge is probably the most renowned area in Prince William, Virginia.”
A new VRE station and parking garage went up in October 1991. The Post reported it was expected to be the busiest in the VRE system. A new overpass over the RR tracks was also built. Woodbridge was the only station to have a new station house.
An elected official at the ceremony was quoted as saying, “Transportation affects every person who lives in our community.”
Perhaps when Prince William County celebrates and commemorates its 300th birthday in 2031, we will hear something like that again. Maybe even at this tucked away historic spot.
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