Tag: virginia

Route 50 in Washington, D.C.

Route 50 enters Washington, D.C. from Maryland and passes through some struggling spots. The contrast with the city’s government buildings and public areas is striking.

A homeless camp on Route 50, seven blocks from the Capitol building
The Capitol, as seen from Route 50
Lawn care at the White House, from Route 50 (Constitution Avenue)

Near the west end of D.C., Route 50 follows Constitution Avenue next to the National Mall.

Constitution Avenue (Route 50) in Washington, D.C.

If you’re lucky, you can park right on the street (early morning is best). Walk for a minute or two into the National Mall, and here’s what you’ll see.

The Washington Monument
The Lincoln Memorial

The city that houses these government buildings and monuments is a stand-alone federal government entity, not part of any state. The citizens who live here possess limited political powers. They have no voting representation in the U.S. Congress, and Congress can overrule decisions of local officials. How did this situation come to be?

It all started because soldiers who had served in the American army during the Revolutionary War wanted their money.

The soldiers had not been paid for their military service, so in June 1783 they sent a message to the Continental Congress (at the time called “the United States in Congress Assembled”) asking for payment. Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ignored them.

A few days later, in what is called the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, some 400 soldiers blocked the doorways to Congress’s meeting hall and refused to let the delegates leave. The soldiers only relented when Alexander Hamilton convinced them that Congress would act on their request.

That very evening, Congress did act, but not in the way the soldiers had hoped. Instead of authorizing back pay, the delegates voted, in secret, to ask the state of Pennsylvania to protect them from any future mutinies. Further, they threatened to move out of Philadelphia, if Pennsylvania didn’t do it.

Pennsylvania not only didn’t do it, it refused outright to do it. Miffed, Congress decamped for Princeton, New Jersey, and declared Princeton, not Philadelphia, to be the provisional capitol of the United States.

Congress did do one typically Congressional thing regarding the mutiny, though. It passed a resolution calling for an investigation.

Five years later, in 1788, James Madison proposed the establishment of a national capital. It would be controlled by the federal government, so Congress wouldn’t have to rely on a state government to provide security. This time, Congress did act. It added a clause to the U.S. Constitution providing for the establishment of a federal district that would house the U.S. Government.

The Constitution, however, did not specify where that district should be. In the course of arriving at the physical location that became Washington, D.C., the federal government moved no less than five times. First to Princeton, as we have already seen, and then to Annapolis, Maryland; Trenton, New Jersey; New York City; and, once more, to Philadelphia.

Eventually, Congress decided on a district “not exceeding ten miles square” to be located on land along the Potomac River belonging to the states of Virginia and Maryland. These states resisted giving up their property at first, but relented in 1790 when the Federal government, led by Madison, Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, offered to pay Revolutionary War debts which Virginia and Maryland still owed.

A committee (this was Congress, after all) named the new city for George Washington, and called the district in which the city lay, Columbia. Columbia is the feminine form of the name Columbus, and at the time it was often used to refer to the United States itself.

Congress moved in on November 17, 1800.

As it happened, the land occupied by the District of Columbia occupied land that included already existing towns, including Alexandria, Virginia, and Georgetown, Maryland.

But wait a minute, you say — as you cross the Potomac on Route 50, leaving D.C. and entering Virginia — Alexandria is right down the river, and it’s in Virginia.

That’s because, in an act that would boggle the minds of many Congressional observers today, in 1846 Congress gave back Virginia’s land. But it did not return Maryland’s, and a look at a map will show that D.C.’s boundary on the Virginia side is the curves of the Potomac, while on the Maryland side its boundary is the straight lines and right angles of a district that had been “ten miles square.” This is why today Georgetown is a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., while Alexandria is a town in Virginia.

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All ph0tos by the author. The map was generated using Google Maps.

Arlington, Virginia — Fort Myer and the Wright Brothers

The buildings in the photo above are part of Fort Myer, a U.S. Army post in Arlington, Virginia. They face Route 50, just west of Washington, D.C.

Behind the buildings, there is a parade ground. On September 17, 1908, Orville Wright took off from there to demonstrate a Wright Brothers airplane to the U.S. Army. An Army observer, Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, rode with him.

The plane developed mechanical problems while in flight. It crashed, and Lieutenant Selfridge became the first fatality ever in a powered airplane.

In 1909, the Wrights gave it another try at Fort Myer. Their new plane needed to pass certain tests before the Army would buy it, and the final test was a ten-mile cross-country flight carrying a passenger. This flight went better than Lieutenant Selfridge’s. It was successfully completed, at an average speed of 42.5 miles per hour.

The Army paid the Wrights $30,000 for their plane.

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Photo by the author.

Upperville, Virginia — Traffic Calming

Virginia’s horse country communities on Route 50 have been concerned because the increasingly busy highway is the main street of their towns.

To maintain (or reclaim) a sense of being a community rather than a pit stop, they have adopted the strategy of traffic calming. This approach encourages drivers to slow down and drive in a manner more appropriate to a community than a highway.

Some traffic calming tactics are shown in these photos from the towns of Upperville and Aldie, Virginia.

The top photo shows paving stone warning strips placed on approaches to the towns. (I know they’re hard to see, but they’re out there, just before and after the car.) These strips cause tires to rumble when they’re crossed, to alert drivers that something different is coming up.

A traffic calming island

This photo shows a landscaped median. It’s intended to block sight lines and force drivers to make a slight sideways movement, causing them to slow down.

Traffic calming on Route 50

This photo shows paving stones used at an intersection in one of the towns. The main road in the photo is Route 50, and the change in pavement is intended to encourage drivers to slow down, both visually and by the sound tires make driving over it.

These ideas and others have been in place for several years. Are they effective? I don’t know what the research says, but they work on me.

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Photos by the author.

Winchester, Virginia — The Civil War

On June 21, 1863, near what is now a prosaic Route 50 intersection east of Winchester, Virginia (shown above), Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart skirmished with Union forces.

He prevailed in that minor battle, and his success gave him the freedom to move north across the Potomac River to Gettysburg, where he joined General Robert E. Lee.

Confederate and Union armies met at Gettysburg from July 1 to July 3, 1863, and the Confederate forces were defeated. Many regard that defeat as the turning point in the Civil War.

The site of a minor, yet important, Civil War skirmish

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Photos by the author.

Winchester, Virginia — George Washington and Stonewall Jackson

Winchester, Virginia served as headquarters for both George Washington and Stonewall Jackson.

Washington came to Winchester in 1748, when he was just sixteen. He spent four years there, working as a surveyor along the Virginia frontier. He returned in 1755 as a colonel in the Virginia militia. He commanded the militia and supervised the construction of a fort from an office inside the building shown above. Route 50 runs right next to the building.

Stonewall Jackson’s office

The Confederate Civil War general Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson lived in Winchester during the winter of 1861-62. Based on his letters, he liked it. He was the commanding general responsible for Confederate campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley. He planned those campaigns in this house.

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Photos by the author.