Local History
THE HISTORY OF COLONIAL BEACH
By Colonel (Ret) John Biemeck ©
Colonial Beach takes its name from the history connected with it. This beautiful stretch of the Potomac River is indeed historical. The Indians were the Potomac River’s first inhabitants and they had villages on both sides of the river. These villages varied in size from 200 or 300 Indians to several thousand inhabitants. The Indians were farmers, fisherman, and hunters. They were generally peaceful, but tribes often fought each other.
The first white man that is known to have ventured up the river past Colonial Beach was Captain John Smith. He departed Jamestown in 1608 and ascended the river to a point just beyond Washington, D.C. His diary appears fairly accurate although his later recollections of his experiences in Virginia are generally regarded as fabrications, written later in England to enhance the sale of a book on his New World experiences. It was on one of his trips up the Potomac that he said that he met Pocahontas in an Indian camp near the present site of Stafford. She was ten years old at the time and it is unlikely they had a love affair or that she saved his life, but it has become a part of American folklore.
European civilization established its foothold on the Potomac in 1634 with the arrival of Lord Baltimore’s colony. Soon large sailing ships were navigating the river and delivering settlers. Colonial Beach’s Monroe Bay was one of the protected harbors used by the colonialists to land supplies, pick-up tobacco, and goods to be returned to Europe. It is said there was a landing on Monroe Bay across from present day Colonial Beach in present day Westmoreland County; where slaves were unloaded for assignment to the plantations. Human remains have been found on the beach at Gum Bar Point (Near the present day Colonial Beach Yacht Club) that are rumored to be the remains of sailors that were shanghaied to delivered goods to America and then murdered by some greedy Captain to avoid paying wages. While an interesting story, the remains are likely from pre-colonial Indian burials and should be considered such until someone can document otherwise.
As previously noted, Colonial Beach takes its name from the Colonial history connected with it. President James Monroe was born at Colonial Beach, on the bay that now bears his family name. It was near here that George Washington, the Father of our country, was born. Nearby stands Stratford Hall, “Light Horse” Henry Lee’s family home and birthplace of General Robert E. Lee. In fact, seventeen of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were born or lived within a fifty-mile radius of the beach.
The Potomac River saw action in both the Revolutionary and the War of 1812. In August 1814, one of the greatest feats in the English Navy’s navigational history occurred in front of Colonial Beach. A large, 174 gun, British fleet, under the command of Captain James Gordon, ascended the river to participate in the capture of Washington, D.C. When he reached Kettle Bottom Shoals, he discovered his ships drew too much water and they could not pass. Instead of turning back, he unloaded his ships and warped them by hand across the oyster banks. After capturing Alexandria, he returned with twenty-one prize ships filled with booty and repeated the feat to return to Chesapeake Bay. His fleet then joined other ships and bombarded Fort McHenry. Captain Gordon’s fleet contained the bomb and rocket ships that participated in the famous bombardment that gave us our national anthem.
The only activity during the early 1800s at Colonial Beach was farming and that of profitable fisheries, a tradition that has continued to present times. In 1853 “White Point” was known as the John L. Cox Fishery. The labor force consisted of 50 men and 3 horses according to the 1850 census. The area was originally called White Point because of the beautiful white sand that was found on the river front. The quality of the sand became widely known in 1858 and by the end of the Civil War, thousands of tons of this unique sand was shipped by two and three mast schooners to New York City’s Central Park and other parks in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington.
In the late 1870s, many wealthy Northerners visited Colonial Beach and marveled at its beauty. Mr. H. J. Kintz of Rochester, New York, was so impressed that he purchased the entire waterfront and adjoining White Farm. The farm house survived can still be seen on Boundary Avenue. He sub-divided the property into lots for summer cottages and sold them to Washingtonians that wanted to escape from the City on weekends. The “weekenders,” tourists, and all supplies came by water and the Potomac was the only means of practical travel and communication. Because only the rich could afford to maintain a stable, the lots were compressed and designed so that everything was within walking distance of the wharf.
One of the Beach’s more famous summer residents was Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, which introduced the electronics age. The “Bell House,” as it is known today was an unusual Victorian cottage that was built around 1883 by Colonel J.O.P. Burnside, the son of General Ambrose Burnside of Civil War fame and at that time was the Superintendent of the Post Office Building and disbursing clerk of the Post Office Department. In May 1884, it was discovered he had embezzled large sums of money from the Post Office and lost it in speculation schemes. As a result, he never moved into the house and he lost it through legal actions. The home was then purchased in 1886 by Professor Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander’s Graham Bell’s father and eventually became Alexander’s summer home in 1907 when he inherited it. Bell was active in Colonial Beach for a number of years and would bring children from Washington, D.C. down to the beach for summer activities.
From 1880 to 1900 the beach prospered and many summer homes were built, primarily in the area south of Colonial Boulevard down to the point. Many of these original cottages have survived and can be identified by their “square design” and typical front porches although many have subsequently been converted into living space. More affluent families from Washington would purchase a summer home and leave their family here during the summer while the man of the house would commute down by steamboat on the weekends. The cool breeze from the Potomac River was a welcome relief from the heat found in the crowded city and swimming on the beautiful beaches was a summer’s delight.
By the turn of the century, Colonial Beach was the most popular summer resort on the Potomac River. Colonial Beach prospered as a summer resort because the steamers from Washington and Baltimore stopped at the Beach with crowds of excursionists. Colonial Beach was also a main crossing point on the river and ferry boats crossed from Morgantown, Maryland to Potomac Beach, bringing additional tourists and travelers. The remains of the ferry boat slips can still be seen several hundred yards south of Wilkerson’s Restaurant. The Beach thrived as an active summer resort until the advent of the automobile. As automobiles replaced the steamer as the primary means of recreational transportation, the flow of tourists diminished.
The steamer Saint Johns was one of the “best beloved” steamers on the Potomac, providing transportation to Colonial Beach from Washington from 1906 to 1927. She is estimated to have carried over two million passengers during her twenty-one year career. Her pilot during her last fifteen years of service was Captain P. J. Barbour, and he took her on her last trip down the Potomac in April 1927. The termination of scheduled steamers to the Beach was the beginning of the end of the Town’s prosperous tourist economy.
Monroe Bay had been an active fishing, crabbing, and oyster center from prior to the Civil War era. However, by 1931 the depression had taken its toll on the fishing industry, oyster dredging had stopped, and the Bay became a graveyard of dead and decaying vessels. The final blow occurred on August 23, 1933, when a huge hurricane struck the Beach with extremely high winds and water that was seven feet over high tide. The storm destroyed the Boardwalk, many summer cottages and tourism facilities. Combined with the effects of the depression, it struck a deathblow to the tourism industry in Town. The fishing industry would not recover until World War Two when it again became a major fishing center with several packing plants.
Crossing the Potomac River was a major problem and obstacle to commerce. Ferry service near this point in the river was initiated in the early 1700s and continued until 1941. The best remembered ferry service was that operated by Captain John Quincy Adams, a direct descendant of the nation’s sixth President. Ferry service was terminated after the completion of the US Highway 301 Nice Bridge in 1940 and automobile, bus, and truck traffic bypassed the Beach.
During the late 1940s and the 1950s, a war broke out between the Maryland and Virginia oystermen over fishing rights in the river. The King of England had given the Potomac River to Lord Baltimore by declaring the Maryland State line was the high water mark on the Virginia side of the river and this had always been a problem. The Maryland State Police armed fast vessels with machine guns and patrolled the river to arrest Virginia oystermen that violated the law on dredging oysters. It was not uncommon to see the Maryland State Police pursuing a Virginia oysterman’s boat and the Town was sprayed with machine gun bullets on several occasions. On April 7, 1959, events turned deadly and the Maryland State Police shot Berkely Muse of Colonial Beach to death as he attempted to escape apprehension for illegally dredging for oysters. This was enough and the Governors of Maryland and Virginia interceded believing people should not be killed over oysters and resolving to forever end the jurisdictional feud. This resulted in the eventual establishment of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission at Colonial Beach to oversee and mitigate future problems.
In 1949, Maryland legalized slot machines. An enterprising Colonial Beach proprietor noted the river was in Maryland (slot machines were illegal in Virginia) and immediately erected a slot machine wharf in the Potomac River, leaving a crack on the state line. He erected a sign that said “You Are Now Entering Maryland.” Almost immediately, Colonial Beach was revived as a tourism center and gambling pier-casinos full of one-armed bandits appeared overnight. The largest and most famous casinos were the Reno and the Monte Carlo and together they had over 500 slot machines. The Connor brothers owned the Reno and initiated “Champagne” flights from Washington and Richmond to Colonial Beach. Champagne was served on the flights which landed at what now is the Colonial Beach drag strip. It was met by a bus with attractive hostesses and delivered the patrons directly to the Reno where they went inside and immediately began feeding the slot machines. Colonial Beach was known as “Las Vegas on the Potomac” and was featured in an article in LOOK Magazine as the East Coast Gambling Center. The town was filled with boarding houses and inns which accommodated the weekend guests that flocked to the Beach to gamble. This was Colonial Beach’s second “golden era” and the Town boomed for nine years until 1958, when the Governors of Maryland and Virginia acted jointly to kill the river slot machines. The tourists immediately began to withdraw and tourism diminished. Oddly enough, the abandoned Reno and Monte Carlo, which were side-by-side, mysteriously caught fire in the mid-1960s and burned to the waterline. Their remains can be seen in the form of abandoned pilings which stretch well beyond the footprint of the current River Boat on the Potomac and testify to the size of these huge casinos of the 1950s.
Several deadly storms also hit the Beach and the diminished tourism discouraged the type of investment that was necessary to restore the Boardwalk and tourist attractions. The most serious was Hurricane Hazel in 1954 which destroyed much of the original boardwalk. The famous Colonial Beach Hotel fell into disrepair and was torn down in 1984. Other well-known landmarks also closed. In the early 1990s, an overzealous Town Council convinced it could revitalize the Town by new development, acquired most of the remaining buildings on the Boardwalk and tore them down. This included the Beach’s waterslide, which was one of the last of the “carnival” type attractions. This was the final blow to the Beach’s tourism industry which has never recovered. The Chesapeake Bay Act made new construction so restrictive and expensive that it became impractical to build anything new for the Beach’s short 16 week summer season as the investment expense far exceeded any possible profits.
Today Colonial Beach is a beautiful waterside community, proud of its past history and traditions. Its elegant Victorian summer homes; cottages; the Boardwalk; parks; and many other landmarks are silent testimony to the Beach’s “golden era” and lasting scenic beauty. Today’s “Waterman” is a modern fisherman that has retained all the proud traditions of the past. Most work crab pots but some are oystermen, and others true fisherman. The Beach had an active oyster packing facility on Winkadoodle Point, at the end of Lafayette Street until just a few years ago. The “Waterman” is the last true descendant of the fishermen that pioneered this part of the river from the late 1600s through the late 1900s.
I love this small documentary on Doc’s Motor Court. Chase and I walk by it every day.