Along the Potomac River. . .

Paul Wilstach wrote a short but interesting final article in the March, 1930 issue of National Geographic Magazine, "Approaching Washington by Tidewater Potomac."  It is a concise history of the early settlers and life there until 1930. The Color Plate section (photographs) is very nice, as usual.

Here are some facts about the Potomac River that may be new to you:

1) The river is partially fresh water and turns to salt water about 40 miles from the Chesapeake Bay.

2) The river is officially in the State of Maryland ("but the citizens of both states have equal fishing rights in the waters" (p. 373).

3) "Potomac" is Indian for "traders."

4) There is evidence that there may have been explorers there from Iceland in the 11th century.

5) Captain John Smith was the first documented explorer in 1608.  He created a map of the river.

6) There are 645 parks in the District of Columbia covering 4,000 acres.

7) There are 2,000 cherry trees on the river bank, all gifts from Japan.

8) Mount Vernon, our first president, George Washington's, plantation, originally was 8,800 acres.

9)  In 1930 there were no bridges across the Potomac River south of Washington, D.C.  The river is from one to seven miles wide.  (Have you ever traveled the long Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel)?

Reading this pricked my memory of past trips to Washington, D.C., and to the Chesapeake Bay area around the Virginia cities of Hampton, Newport News, and Norfolk.  While Virginia Beach on the Atlantic Ocean is much too crowded, the Bay area is lovely.  I saw a real panda at the Washington, D.C. Zoo.  I wonder if it is still there. . .

Mr. Wilstach inspires me to want to return.  "A little way down the river we left Mount Vernon, with all the actualities that remain of Washington the man.  Ahead rises the panorama of the Capital City of our Nation, representing the actuality of Washington's ideals and hopes.  Above its green skyline rest the lofty cornice of the Lincoln Memorial, the Parthenon of the Western World, and the white dome of the Capital, where focus the lawmaking national Congress and the law-sustaining Supreme Court.  Between the two, its tip touching the blue high above every other detail of its environment, is the Monument dedicated to the memory of Washington himself and a fitting apotheosis of the greatest of the great sons of the Potomac" (p. 392).