The Fate of White’ s Ferry
What historical maps can and cannot confirm
By Kenny Sholes
For more than five years, the historic White’ s Ferry has been closed to travelers wishing to cross the Potomac River from Maryland and Virginia. Amid the acrimonious back and forth between the parties looking for a resolution, the central point of disagreement is often forgotten or overlooked. There is no question that the Virginia landing point of White’ s Ferry is within the property lines of Rockland, the historic estate and property whose owners brought legal suit against the White’ s Ferry owners, resulting in the ferry’ s closure.
This fact has been upheld in court. However, the critical question is whether the current Virginia landing point is in the same location as the landing point in 1871, when a court order created a public easement for the ferry’ s use. Interestingly, this court order was at the behest of Col. Elijah V. White, a Poolesville native who had fought with the confederacy in the Civil War.
In short, if the current owners of the ferry were able to prove, without any doubt, that the current Virginia landing site is in the same location as it was in 1871, they would have a much stronger legal case to reestablish ferry operations.( Note: there are additional disagreements between the parties that would also need to be ironed out, but this is the core issue.) This should be easy to prove, right? Unfortunately, because the language in the 1871 court order is imprecise and contains no map, it is not. The easement created in the 1871 case is a very small parcel of land. We know it’ s size, just not it’ s exact location. As such, when we look to prove that the location of the Virginia landing today is the same as it was in 1871, we need to be exact. Determining that the current location is generally in the same location as it was in 1871— which I believe to be the case— is not precise enough to pass legal scrutiny.
To be clear from the outset, despite some research of historic maps and documents, which is outlined here, I don’ t possess any conclusive evidence to definitively state that the landing site remains the same today as it was 155 years ago. Instead, this article hopefully serves as an invitation to local historians, cartographers, and concerned residents to dig into the history of White’ s Ferry to see what can be uncovered.
As an amateur historian focused on the Ag Reserve myself, I spend a lot of time researching and thinking about how our local landscape has changed— or remained the same— through time. In fact, one of my favorite terms in this effort is“ chronolocation,” a term I did not make up but I define as the use of maps, images, and other publicly available information to identify, locate, and understand a place through time. What can chronolocation tell us about White’ s Ferry?
To begin with, we actually have multiple maps available to us from the mid to late 1800s that help us better understand the landscape around the time of the 1871 court
Yardley Map of Loudoun County, 1854.( Source: Library of Congress)
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