(Not my picture of SE 9. I hope to see it in person later this morning.)
This is a bit in the way of a place-holder, so bear with me. I will fill you in completely tomorrow, if we live. I hope that is the case.
So, ten years after I started this adventure, I am supposed to meet Argo and his Deutscher girl friend at the Oxon Hill park and venture into the foliage in search of the elusive SE9, the last (actually, second to last- I may have to knock them both out today since I rarely travel to the wilds of SE DC anymore) of the District Boundary Stones, first monuments of the new Republic.
I have had a pretty good run at seeing them all, and this morning there is
a trip to the beginning of the Republic.
I have written periodically of this quest to see all the remaining stones. The saga for me began in 2002, when I first learned of the extraordinary and mostly neglected monuments commissioned by Congress as one of the first public works of the new nation.
Congress passed the Federal Residence Act in 1790, 223 years ago. Maryland and Virginia ceded land to the new Government in accordance with the Act to form a diamond spanning the Potomac River, the lower anchor being Jones Point south of Alexandria, VA. The original District of Columbia was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles.
Major Ellicott’s team placed boundary stones at intervals of one mile all along the edges of the Diamond. It was brutal work, hauling the heavy sandstone pillars to be placed precisely at every mile point along the borders of the new capital territory, with a ten foot clearing in the dense underbrush on either side.
It is a queer thing that so many of them are left. I guess it is because they represent the edge of things, not the middle. Two are in storage after misadventure; one in Alexandria is clearly a copy, though there is no reason for it. Two more are just missing, one replaced with a duplicate, and another trashed and replaced with a plaque. There are still more than thirty left in situ, some in good shape and some quite bedraggled.
But all of them have locations associated with them, if you care to look.
Argo has had an interest in my DC Stones adventure, and accompanied me on a chaperoned trip to the Boundary Stone located in the Dalecarlia Reservoir (NW 5), to which (legal) access is controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers. Actually, NW 4 is, too, though you can see it from outside the fence at the Montgomery County line.
Anyway, Argo saw those two with me, since I made an appointment with the Corps after a couple unsuccessful forays into the deep woods outside the Reservoir.
The handful of hard ones was slowly diminishing, since most are fairly near roads or accessible public areas (the ones in private hands in what used to be the District component of Virginia require some modest private trespass).
Left on the menu were SE 8, in the wilds of Anacostia and located in the DC Impound Lot, not far from the unmarked graves of the German U-Boat saboteurs executed in the DC Jail in 1942. That required several trips to identify, and it was useful to have a posse with me, since frankly the place is scarier than shit. Potters Field, Ward 8, deer, drug deals and all that sort of stuff.
Today, DC 9 is the target. It is on the shore of the Potomac, near what once was the ferry terminus from Alexandria, and now is scrub on the west side of I-270. I suppose you could just pull off the highway and clamber down, but I think we are going to drive to Oxon Hill Farm and park in the NPS lot and hike a mile or so in.
That will leave NW 8 as the last one, though actual touching of all of them once was the goal. That one is located on a trail off Eastern and Kenilworth Ave, and is another I would prefer to visit in a group, and to take the Police Cruiser to visit, rather than the Mercedes.
Anyway, if I nail DC 9 morning that will at least represent an attempt to see them all, and the last one before the jump back across the Wilson Bridge to the first one placed by free African American Benjamin Banneker at Jones Point, the location of which was selected by George Washington.
Then a swim, I guess, or just push off from there for the farm and try to decompress. There’s been so much shit going on for so long that I am quite exhausted by the whole thing.
Still, here is to Ellicott and Banneker, and times that seemed a lot less complex.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303