Great Falls Tavern: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, National Park Service
Temkin M. 2010. Great Falls Tavern: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, National Park Service. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 600271. NPS National Capital Regional Office. National Capital Regional Office/CLI
The Great Falls Tavern component landscape is about 270 acres in size. It is located on the east bank of the Potomac River approximately fifteen miles northwest of Washington, D.C. in Montgomery County, Maryland. This cultural landscape contains historic structures relating to both the canal and the Washington Aqueduct, in addition to a modern concession stand, and interpretive/recreational trails. A small museum and bookstore is located inside the historic tavern building, which is also a visitor center. Park employees offer interpretive canal boat rides between April and October. Also included in this landscape are several mid-river islands. Olmsted Island is accessible by pedestrian footbridge and provides views of the Great Falls of the Potomac as well as unusual plant communities. Visitor access is by automobile via MacArthur Boulevard and/or Falls Road, and by foot or bicycle via the canal towpath. Located in the Maryland piedmont, the landscape of Great Falls Tavern includes flood plain and steep, river bluffs. Riparian vegetation lines the river in the area of the flood plain, while the rocky bluffs support a primarily oak-hickory second growth forest. In addition, the higher elevations on the east side of the site contain gold veins, which led to the development of mining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and towpath traverse the Great Falls Tavern landscape. Entrance to the site is via a nineteenth-century road related to the Washington Aqueduct. The site landscape is defined by its periods of development, which began in the early eighteenth century. Initially a remote and undeveloped locale patented primarily for use as an area for hunting and fishing, the site changed dramatically with the start of canal construction in 1828 and the building of the Washington Aqueduct in the mid-nineteenth century. The landscape was primarily industrial and commercial until the closing of the canal in 1924, when recreational uses came to the fore. Recreational use of the site was reinforced when the National Park Service (NPS) took over the property in 1938. The NPS also began to interpret the canal history of the site. The Great Falls Tavern component landscape retains only partial integrity to its period of significance (1828-1924) because some landscape elements related to both the canal and the aqueduct other elements have been compromised.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Temkin, Martha
- Date of Issue
- 2010-09-23
- Publisher
- NPS National Capital Regional Office
- Units
- CHOH , NCR
- Keywords
- Aqueduct, Architecture, C&O Canal, Canal, Canal Lock, Commerce, Crommelin House, Culvert, Engineering, Expanding Science and Technology, Explorations of the West, Great Falls Tavern Visitors Center, historic site, Historic Vernacular Landscape, Iron and Ferro Alloys, Lock House 12, Mine, Mining, Navigational, Outdoor Recreation, Potomac River, Recreation, Shipping and Transportation by Water, The Industrial Revolution, trade, Transportation, Washington Aqueduct, Water Works, Water-Related, Westward Expansion of the Colonies