Along the C&O Canal in Georgetown

Last December I met an old friend for lunch at Café La Ruche, on 31st Street, NW, in Georgetown.  Originally a small tobacco port town on the Potomac River, Georgetown was founded and named after King George II in 1751 and later incorporated into Washington, DC in 1871.  The building housing this popular French bistro was originally a private residence constructed circa 1830 on what was then known as Fishing Lane.  It remained a family residence over the years, and in the 1960s it served as the Market Playhouse and home to its popular repertory company.  Café La Ruche, which has long been my favorite watering hole in Georgetown, opened its doors in 1979.  “A bit of Paris on the Potomac.”

This lunchtime outing provided an ideal opportunity to wander along the C&O Canal as it transects Georgetown from its starting point at the former tidewater canal where Rock Creek flows into the Potomac River very near the Watergate complex.  Here, too, a skirting canal was constructed along the river to the Washington City Canal which followed what is now Constitution Avenue to wharves located along the Eastern Branch of the Potomac (now the Anacostia River).  I was able to walk the first mile of the 185 mile length of the C&) Canal as it parallels the Potomac from Georgetown to Cumberland, Maryland.

The canal was originally designed to allow for the transportation of goods and cargo from the head of navigable water on the Potomac to the headwaters of the Ohio River at Pittsburgh, in western Pennsylvania.  The Patowmack Company, established by George Washington in 1785, constructed a series of canals along the Virginia side of the river to improve navigation on the Potomac by bypassing the falls above Georgetown.  It eventually ceded its holdings to the Chesapeake and Ohio Company in 1824, and President John Quincy Adams broke ground for the new canal on July 4, 1828.  The first section from Georgetown to Seneca Falls, Maryland was completed and operational in 1831.  The remainder of the canal and its 74 locks, which raised or lowered barges 604 feet, were completed only to Cumberland in 1851, and in 1889 it came under the control of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  The canal remained operational until 1924 when it was damaged by flooding and could no longer compete with the faster railroads.

The federal government took control of the obsolete canal in 1938 with the idea of transforming it into a National Park, plans for which were delayed by the onset of World War II.  After the war there was talk of constructing a highway along the river, and in 1954 Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas hiked the entire length of the old canal to underscore its importance as a recreational area.  It was finally designated a National Historic Park in January 1971, due in large part to Douglas’ continuing efforts. 

My ramble began at the site of the former Tidal Lock, at the site of the Potomac watergate.  Rock Creek was originally damned at this site to create a tidewater basin where boats and barges could maneuver as they entered and departed the canal.  The lock is now badly disintegrated and silted in and there is no towpath adjacent to this lock.  It is necessary to walk past the Thompson Boat Center and take the bridge over Rock Creek to the beginning of the towpath on the edge of Georgetown.

At the time the canal was built Georgetown was a gritty, industrial port with warehouses,  foundries and mills located along its edges.  The towpath was originally on the river (south) side of the canal as far as what is now 29th Street, NW (formerly Green Street) to avoid interfering with the wharves that were expanding along the riverfront to handle coal, building stones and other cargo following the construction of the canal.  Today the canal walk in Georgetown, runs entirely along the north side of the canal and the first four locks, which are situated very close together in the first mile, still contain water and are some of the best preserved locks on the entire canal.  Walking here one can get a real sense of what it was like over a century ago.

It was a delightful lunch at Café La Ruche, all the more so given a beautiful day for a quiet stroll along the canal.  I must come back here when the weather warms up, but it is a treat regardless of the season.   

Time to Venture Forth Again . . . .

It has been a mild winter and so it has not been the weather that has kept me from exploring the city. The plain fact of the matter is that I have been terribly busy coupled with the fact that I also made an extended road trip to the Canadian Maritime in January, and I have recently returned home from a long trip across the Midwest to North Dakota (you can read about these trips at www.lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com ). But Spring has finally sprung in Washington, DC and it is time again to venture forth and see what the city has to offer. I hope you will join me.

Turkey Thicket

This being Thanksgiving day and all, it seems entirely appropriate to mention the fact that Washington, DC is home to a small and little known neighborhood known as Turkey Thicket. I have been driving through it fairly regularly for the past 35 years not knowing it was there. In fact, few people other than those who call it home are aware of it. It is actually a part of the larger University Heights neighborhood in the Brookland section of northeast DC. I have yet to explore it on foot, something I plan to do in the very near future. But I want to recognize it here today.

I am still trying to find out how this neighborhood got its name as there has been neither a thicket nor any turkeys in these environs in even the farthest distant memory. But this is what I do know. Up until the late 19th century, this area was still hilly woodland and farms where Washington’s elite would come to escape the heat and humidity of the city’s riverside precincts. The area now known informally as Turkey Thicket was originally part of the Bellair plantation belonging to Colonel Jehiel Brooks (1797-1886) who settled here in the late 1830s following his tenure as governor of the Red River Indian Agency in Louisiana. In 1861, as the Southern secession tore this country apart, the federal government erected a number of earthen and brick fortifications around Washington. One of these, Fort Bunker Hill, was constructed by the 11th Massachusetts Infantry on Brooks’ property, along the old Bladensburg-Georgetown road (later Bunker Hill Road and now Michigan Avenue). This drew the ire of the Colonel who was a dyed-in-the-wool Confederate sympathizer, and he unsuccessfully challenged the government to remove it. The fort was later manned by members of the 11th Vermont Infantry whose encampment was situated in Turkey Thicket, less than a half mile to the northwest.

The city of Washington began to expand following the war. The Catholic University of America, situated immediately to the west of Turkey Thicket and the Brooks plantation, opened its doors in 1887. Brooks’ son sold the plantation that same year to men who would later develop Brookland.

The area generally known as Turkey Thicket was still an open field in the 1930s as new homes and neighborhoods sprouted nearby. The site of Fort Bunker Hill was improved into a park by the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps and later taken over by the National Park Service. A clubhouse was eventual constructed in the nearby field in 1948, and it was replaced in 2003 by the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center and Playground. This is the only reference to Turkey Thicket you will on a current map of Washington, DC.

I shall return to this area in the near future as part of my exploration of Brookland, the section of the city closet to where I reside just across the border in Maryland. It has developed its own unique history over the past century.

Hallowed Ground

There is nothing like a long walk through Arlington National Cemetery on a cool, brisk autumn morning. Today we think of this place as the final resting place for those who have served their country bravely and honorably, many of whom gave their final measure of devotion in this service. Yet these rolling hills and vales have a history associated both with the early days of the republic and those years when it was almost ripped apart.

George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington, who in 1802 inherited a 1,100 acre estate covering the hills of northern Virginia overlooking the Potomac River and the District of Columbia, immediate set out to construct Arlington House (now the Custis-Lee Mansion) which was eventually completed in 1818. In 1831, Mary, his only child, married Robert E. Lee, a young army lieutenant, and the manor house became their home for the next 30 years. It was here that Lee, upon being offered the command of the Union army, resigned his commission in 1861 when he pledged his allegiance to the Confederacy. He and Mary surrendered their home and lands which were then occupied by Federal troops throughout the war. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, a section of the former plantation was the site of Freedman’s Village which housed refugee former slaves as they transitioned to a life of freedom. By 1864 another section was also serving as a burial ground for soldiers who died in hospitals in and around Washington, most of them either unknown or whose families could not afford to ship their remains home. It was officially designated the Arlington National Cemetery that year.

I first came to this place in the summer of 1964 and I still have strong memories of that visit - watching the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and seeing the grave of John F. Kennedy, who had been murdered in Dallas just a few months earlier.
[See: http://lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2010/11/fading-memory-of-camelot.html ]

However, on this most recent visit during which I returned to the Kennedy grave, something I have done several times in the intervening years, I was content to walk the paths alone, taking in the autumn foliage while savoring the respite from the noise and bustle of the city. In the distance I heard the muffled drums escorting another fallen soldier on his or her final journey. A band played "Onward Christian Soldiers" and shortly thereafter, on a nearby hilltop, the haunting chords of "Amazing Grace" by a lone bagpiper. Then the quick, sharp rifle reports of the honor guard echoing across this most hallowed ground. It all seemed timely as I was there to say my own very personal farewell to a dear old friend. I hope he will find the peace he was looking for.

What is a Flâneur?

A flâneur is someone who has perfected the art of observation and as a result is able to create lives, back stories, if you will, of people he/she has encountered. A flâneur wanders extensively yet often aimlessly - just "shambling after" in the words of Jack Kerouac - and does not expect to arrive at any particular place with a specific plan in mind. Join me as I set off to explore the neighborhoods and streets of Washington, DC. You and I might be surprised at what I find.