Alexandria, an international seaport from the beginning
Source: Library of Congress
You can see the impacts of transportation networks on early urban development in Virginia in the growth of Alexandria. The Alexandria merchants financed a transportation network into the backcountry or "hinterland," the farmland west of the Fall Line. The city connected its ports and its stores to farms in the Piedmont - and then to the Shenandoah Valley.
Investments in turnpikes, harbor improvements, canals, and railroads made Alexandria into an economically successful city. Despite the transfer of government responsibility for the city to the District of Columbia and back again, Alexandria was able to outcompete Georgetown across the river as well as Occoquan, Dumfries, and Fredericksburg in Virginia.
Alexandria and Dumfries were chartered on the same day in 1749, and both were sponsored by Scottish merchants with comparable (rather than intensely rival) economic interests. The towns even have the same pattern of colonial street names - Prince, Duke, etc.
However, Dumfries failed to build roads, canals, or railroads to facilitate farmers bringing crops to their docks. Dumfries also failed to prevent soil erosion from silting up the harbor, which is traditionally cited as the reason for "Virginia's oldest continuously chartered town" from failing to grow.
Within 25 years after the initial founding date, Alexandria was thriving while Dumfries had already faded into obscurity. Dumfries business largely ceased when the port was filled with sediment. Efforts to dredge a channel or move downstream ("Newport" townhomes on the south bank have that name for a reason...) failed, and Dumfries literally became a backwater. The site of the old wharves on Dumfries is now between the two halves of US 1, running through town.
The Alexandria merchants reached out first to link up with Loudoun County farmers in the 1790's. Alexandria initiated and financed the Little River Turnpike to Aldie, where the Little River cuts through the Blue Ridge. (Today, the turnpike route goes from Alexandria to Jermantown near the Fairfax campus of George Mason University on US 236, then takes US 50 west past Chantilly to the Blue Ridge.)
The Little River Turnpike was the first successful turnpike in the South, and was later extended west to the crest of the Blue Ridge by the Ashby Gap Turnpike Company. (The Philadelphia-Lancaster turnpike, drawing the trade of farmers in southeastern Pennsylvania to Philadelphia and away from Baltimore, was the first successful toll road in North America.)
Even after paying the toll, the road permitted farmers thoughout western Fairfax and Loudoun counties to make a greater profit. The Little River Turnpike reduced the time required to transport wheat and other bulky items to the port. Ships from Alexandria could carry farm products to multiple markets, including Europe. Competition to purchase the Piedmont farm products was greater, prices for Piedmont farmers were higher, and Alexandria merchants benefitted from increased economic activity in their city...
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Next target was the agricultural trade from Prince William, Fauquier, Culpeper, and Orange counties. Alexandria financed (with state assistance) the Warrenton-Alexandria turnpike to Fauquier County. Today it is US 29, connecting with the Little River Turnpike at Jermantown. The Stone Bridge over Bull Run and the Stone House on Manassas Battlefield were constructed to facilitate the trade between Alexandria and more farmers between Bull Run and the Rappahannock River.
Check the old maps of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County, and you might find a reference to the "Warrenton Turnpike." You might even find a modern roadsign with that name. However, if you look at Fauquier records, don't be surprised to see references to the "Alexandria Turnpike." Obviously, the locals on one side of the road referred to the road based on the destination at the other end... Alexandria merchants were part of the Patowmack and Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal initiatives. Alexandria even arranged for an extension of the later canal, which originally ended in the competitive rival of Georgetown. The Alexandria Canal extension of the C&O Canal, which crossed the Potomac River on Aqueduct Bridge, was intended to draw canal boats to the deeper water port at Alexandria. Georgetown merchants might get first crack at the trade coming down the canal, and Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Coast traffic relying upon shallow water ships might stop just at Georgetown - but Alexandria was an attractive destination to those boats engaged in international trade to the Caribbean and Europe, where ships required a deepwater channel not available at Georgetown. You can still see one pier of the old bridge on the Georgetown side next to Key Bridge. One of the tidewater locks in Alexandria, where the C&O canal packet boats were raised or lowered into the Potomac River, has been reconstructed as an amenity for modern office buildings. When Alexandria was included within the boundaries of the District of Columbia in 1800-1846, there was no reason for Virginia politicians to support the economic growth of the city. Board of Public Works funding was resticted to projects within the boundaries of the state of Virginia, and Alexandria was not part of Virginia for nearly 50 years. Almost as soon as Alexandria was "revested" back to Virginia in 1847, the General Assembly chartered the Orange and Alexandria (O&A) railroad. The O&A stretched southwest from the port city through the Piedmont, attracting the farm trade more effectively than the Warrenton Turnpike. |
 Stone House on Manassas Battlefield - once a toll house for Alexandria-Warrenton Turnpike |
That railroad defeated the efforts of Fredericksburg merchants to attract the same business by building a canal up the Rappahannock. By the time the Rappahannock Canal got to Kellys Ford (near present-day Remington in Fauquier County), the Piedmont farmers were already accustomed to shipping via the railroad to Alexandria.
The Orange and Alexandria Railroad siphoned the trade to Alexandria, away from Fredericksburg, before Fredericksburg's canal could link the economy of that port city with the upper Rappahannock River valley. Because roads and railroads led from the Piedmont to Alexandria, the farmers in the Rappahannock River Valley could ship their products to markets in Alexandria; Fredericksburg did not become the preferred business center of the Piedmont.
(Fredericksburg was linked to the Potomac River and to Richmond by one of the first railroads in the state, but did not build a line west to Orange/Culpeper counties before the Civil War. By the time Fredericksburg constructed the Potomac Fredericksburg & Piedmont (PF&P) in the 1870's, the economy of the Piedmont was tied tightly to Alexandria. The railroad operated as just a narrow-gauge line, and the derogatory term "Poor Folks & Preachers Railroad" indicates that it was never a major freight route.1)
Alexandria was not satisfied with just the trade from the Piedmont. The city's ambitions extended further west, to the Shenandoah Valley and beyond. A charter for the Manassas Gap Railroad authorized an independent line to run from Mount Jackson to Alexandria, with a branch reaching into southern Loudoun County between the Blue Ridge and the Potomac River. After the recession known as the Panic of 1857, construction of the Manassas Gap railroad was truncated. The independent line was connected to the O&A at a location named Manassas Junction, a name soon shortened to just "Manassas."
The Alexandria, Loudoun, and Hampshire railroad (AL&H) was expected to bring coal traffic from Hampshire County (now in West Virginia) to Alexandria, in addition to the farm trade from the Winchester area. The AL&H route is the current W&OD bike path. The bike trail stops in Purcellville today; the AL&H was never built across the physical barrier of the Blue Ridge. Despite the construction and financial limits, the Manassas Gap and AL&H railroads are another example of how Alexandria competed with Fredericksburg, DC, and even Baltimore, by building a better transportation system from the "hinterland" (the surrounding region dependent on the central city) to connect with the international shipping on the Potomac River.
When the Washington Post started shipping newsprint by rail instead of ship to its Robinson Terminal several years ago, Alexandria lost its last major freight operation. The coal-fired power plant generating electricity in Alexandria also gets supplied by trains. Today, the transportation network is designed to facilitate moving commuters rather than raw materials or manufactured products.
1. "Orange to Fredericksburg," in Abandoned Rails of Virginia, http://www.abandonedrails.com/Orange_to_Fredericksburg (last checked September 17, 2010)
- Harrison, Fairfax, "Alexandria and the Flour Trade" in Landmarks of Old Prince William, pp. 397-418, Prince William County Historical Commission, Gateway Press, Baltimore, 1987 (reprint)
