Oxon Cove Park: Cultural Landscape Inventory: National Capital Parks-East-Oxon Cove Park

McMillen, Frances

Oxon Hill Farm, a 289-acre site, is a cultural landscape within Oxon Cove Park (512 acres) and located in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The park is approximately eight miles south of the United States Capitol. The farm site is bordered to the north by Oxon Run, to the south by Interstate 95/495 and Oxon Cove to the west. A historic road trace known by several different names since it was established, but referred to as the Washington-Piscatawy Road Trace in this inventory, borders the farm to the east. Oxon Hill Farm was listed on the National Register on September 2, 2003. The farm is listed on the National Register under Criteria A and C and significant in the areas of health, medicine and agriculture. The period of significance is 1791-1890 and 1891-1967. The period begins with the documentation of the ownership and development of the land that would become Oxon Hill Farm and ends when the site becomes a unit of the National Park Service in 1967. Oxon Hill Farm is significant for its association with the agricultural history of Prince George’s County, Maryland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The farm was cultivated by its owners or tenant farmers until its acquisition by the federal government at the end of the nineteenth century. Oxon Hill Farm is also significant for its association with St. Elizabeths Hospital, originally known as the Government Hospital for the Insane. Founded in 1852, St. Elizabeths was the nation’s first federally operated mental health facility. The hospital acquired the farm in 1891 while under the leadership of Doctor William Whitney Godding and intended for it to provide therapy for patients in the form of labor in the fields and gardens. Doctor Godding envisioned the farm, known during this period as Godding Croft, growing into a “colony” where patients lived and worked. He thought “such colonies may in time be multiplied and extended, growing into villages for the harmless insane.” Though the farm never materialized into the colony Godding hoped for, patients did work there and it provided food for the hospital until the 1960s. Oxon Hill Farm retains much of its nineteenth, and possibly eighteenth, century agrarian landscape character. The majority of the field patterns, orchards, ornamental plantings and circulation system date to the period of significance and reflect land usage and spatial organization of that era. Many of the farm’s buildings and structures also date to the period of significance and are representative of construction methods and building styles of the early to late nineteenth century. The Oxon Hill Farm cultural landscape retains integrity to its period of significance, 1791-1890 and 1891-1967, and is in good condition. While there have been some changes and the loss of certain historic features, Oxon Hill Farm still invokes the historic significance of the landscape through the integrity of all seven aspects.

Oxon Cove Park: Cultural Landscape Inventory: National Capital Parks-East-Oxon Cove Park

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