List Editor: Wendy Plotkin <wplotk1@uic.edu>
Editor's Subject: Re: WWW: "The Mall" and "Swamp" Beginnings of D.C.
Author's Subject: Re: WWW: "The Mall" and "Swamp" Beginnings of D.C.
Date Written: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 09:55:36 -0500
Date Posted: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 09:55:36 -0500
[Ed: This posting includes responses from Bob Arnebeck, who initiated
the discussion, and Carl Abbott, author of POLITICAL TERRAIN:
WASHINGTON, D.C., FROM TIDEWATER TOWN TO GLOBAL METROPOLIS (Chapel
Hill: U. of North Carolina Pr., 1999) ]

1) Posted by Bob Arnebeck <Swamp1800@aol.com>

The Mall itself was never a tidal marsh. It was bordered on the north
by Tiber Creek which ebbed and flowed with the tides leaving exposed
mud.

Clay McShane is to be commended for pulling together those maps of
Washington for us, but the best way to get a sense of what the Mall
was is simply to walk down from Mall to Constitution Avenue, cross
Constitution Avenue, walk along the level to Pennsylvania Avenue and
then up the hill to F Street.

[Ed: The modern map at

 http://sc94.ameslab.gov/TOUR/tour.html

may be useful to those who are not familiar with the geography
of Washington, D.C.  ]

The problem area in terms of drainage was north of Constitution
Avenue, originally Tiber Creek, and south of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The next walk to take is down from Capitol Hill to the Botanical
Garden. Here is where the canal, which Tiber Creek was to become,
turned south and took advantage of the drainage of St. James Creek to
continue as a canal to the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. You can still
sense the rising land as you walk up from the Botanical Garden to the
Mall. The extension of the Mall which goes from the Washington
Monument to the Lincoln Memorial was open river in the 1790s. As with
many rivers, farming upstream led to silting below the fall
line. While President John Quincy Adams swam a few yards from the foot
of the White House Grounds, past the point formed where the Tiber met
the Potomac and continued to the Virginia shore, that feat soon became
problematical.

The map on the Mall web site to look at is Robert King's 1818 map:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/MALL/king.htm

 From that it is easy to see the problematical low ground, which still
is not properly called a swamp or marsh. Originally the Mall was
probably forested, then became farm fields, then old fields. I think
the best way to describe the web site about it is to say that the site
describes how L'Enfant's plans for the undeveloped fields west of the
Capitol began a process which resulted in the tourist park we have
today.

I searched the Mall web site for the use of the words "swamp" and
"marsh" and found neither. Use of those words to describe the web site
are a disservice because they immediately raise two questions: why did
Washington site the capital on a swamp or marsh? and what engineering
measures were taken to develop the swamp or marsh? The questions raise
false issues and get students well off on the wrong foot when they try
to understand the development of Washington, D.C.

The chief attraction of the site to Washington and others was its
combination of several points of easily developed high ground combined
with a commodious and protected harbor along the Anacostia River.
L'Enfant did not place the Mall where he did with the idea that
placing his most significant avenue there would prompt drainage and
development, nor was it a long range plan. As I read his letters, he
first wanted to terrace the Capitol grounds which would have shown the
significance of the Grand Avenue (the Mall) where he envisioned the
palatial residences of ambassadors and perhaps a grand theatre, all to
be in place within ten years which even he would have realized was
impossible if the area was marsh or swampland.

Finally, we never are sure what the uses of history will be. What
Clay McShane has written might prompt a developer with an eye on some
wetlands, to point to the Mall as a living example of what wonderful
things can be done once a wetland is bulldozed over. It would not be
the first example of Americans claiming as a birthright some myth
perpetrated by historians.

Bob Arnebeck
http://members.aol.com/Swamp1800
(early DC history)

2) Posted by Carl Abbott <AbbottC@mail.pdx.edu>

In evaluating the swampiness of early Washington, it is important to
differentiate between the original site and land created later in the
city's development.

The original site was carefully chosen to be dry land -- Capitol Hill
and the lands sloping south and southeast toward the Eastern Branch of
the Potomac (Anacostia River); the White House on another piece of
high ground, the land that rose northward from the route of
Pennsylvania Avenue. Tourists who hike around Washington still
encounter this topography. South of Pennsylvania Avenue, and roughly
parallel to the northern edge of the modern Mall, ran Tiber Creek,
which drained low lands that can also still be perceived in the area
between Union Station and the Capitol. The creek was originally
navigable by small boats but gradually silted up over time, turning
into an unpleasant backwater.

The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and Tidal Basin are the result of
engineering efforts a century and more after the founding of the
city. One of the results of extensive agricultural and mining
development in the Potomac drainage area upstream from Washington was
erosion and the washing of substantial amounts of soil
downstream. Some of this soil settled out as the river's current
slowed below its falls -- that is, right in front of Washington. By the
1880s or so, substantial mud flats had accreted in front of the
original site. It was these flats that were engineered and beautified
into the contemporay waterfront.

It is also worth noting that Bladensburg, Maryland developed in the
mid-18th century as a tobacco port at the head of navigation on the
Anacostia River. Erosion resulting from heavy tobacco cultivation
also silted up the Anacostia, turning Bladensburg into an inland town.

Carl Abbott
Portland State University



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