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George Washington Memorial Parkway
Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C.
Postcard view of Great Falls, (ca. 1900) |
GREAT FALLS AND THE POTOMAC PALISADES
Great Falls has been a popular tourist destination since George Washington's time. Along with the dramatic natural scenery, the Patowmack Canal, which Washington built around the falls in the 1790s, was considered an engineering marvel, attracting visitors from around the world. Washington's canal was short-lived, but its successor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, provided nineteenth-century excursionists with a popular and relaxing method of reaching the falls and enjoying the surrounding woodlands. Construction of electric trolley lines to Great Falls and Glen Echo at the beginning of the twentieth century made the falls and the Potomac Palisades even more accessible.
Unfortunately, the Palisades were also accessible to stone quarrying operations, which threatened to reduce the imposing cliffs to rubble by the end of the nineteenth century. The 1901 Senate Park Commission urged Congress to preserve the Palisades and develop a series of winding parkways along the banks of the Potomac between Washington and Great Falls.
Senate Park Commission Report (1902) |
THE CAPPER-CRAMTON ACT OF 1930
By the 1920s, Great Falls and the Potomac Palisades were threatened not just by quarrying, but by a private power company's plans to build hydroelectric dams above and below the falls. To prevent this danger, conservationists, historical associations, and civic groups worked with Representative Louis C. Cramton and Senator Arthur Capper to secure passage of a bill authorizing the creation of George Washington Memorial Parkway as an elongated regional park stretching along both sides of the Potomac River between Great Falls and Mount Vernon.
A parkway drive similar to Mount Vernon Memorial Highway would follow the Maryland shoreline. Existing roads would be used on most of the Virginia side to avoid costly construction along the Palisades. A proposed bridge at Great Falls and a ferry between Fort Washington and Fort Hunt would allow motorists to make a grand loop tour of the region's natural and historic features. This aspect of the plan was eventually shelved, but new bridge-building technologies enabled parkway designers to route the parkway along the Virginia palisades.
George Washington Memorial Parkway Proposal, 1930 (NARA) |
| Introduction | Acadia | Blue Ridge Parkway | Colonial Parkway | Generals Highway | George Washington Memorial Parkway | Great Smoky Mountains | Mount Rainier | Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway | Shenandoah's Skyline Drive | Southwest Circle Tour | Vicksburg | Yellowstone | Yosemite | Discover History |
