Preservation and Partners: A History of Piscataway Park

McDonnell, Janet

During the early republic period of American history, President George Washington was the most renowned resident of the Potomac River valley. His sprawling Mount Vernon estate sat on a hill directly across the Potomac River from the 17th century Marshall Hall estate in Maryland. There is ample evidence that Washington and his guests enjoyed and very much appreciated the stunning view. Many years later preserving this view would become the major impetus for establishing what we know today as Piscataway Park (PISC), a few miles south of Washington, DC. These lands along the Maryland shore of Potomac River were actively cultivated during George Washington’s time, and the existing park setting, which includes agricultural lands and open spaces interspersed with forests and wetlands, closely approximates that historic scene. The National Park Service’s (NPS) primary goal and responsibility in managing the park has been, and continues to be, preserving this historic scene of open fields and wooded areas and ensuring that it does not authorize any landscape alterations except those that would restore previously undisturbed sites, reduce visual intrusions, or maintain open fields. The NPS continues to take into account the slope and orientation of the terrain and the tree cover when considering the location of any new facilities. Piscataway Park and its associated lands are for the most part held under scenic easements and constitute a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) historic district made up of nearly 5,000 acres of meadow, woodland, and wetland, along six miles of the Potomac River shoreline from the head of Piscataway Creek to the historic Marshall Hall in Maryland’s Prince George’s and Charles counties. The northern border of the historic district crosses Piscataway Creek, a tidal tributary that enters the Potomac River at Fort Washington, and includes the Fort Washington Marina as well as adjacent lands to the northeast of the marina. A community of private property owners living in what is called the Moyaone Reserve occupy a good portion of the park. The origins of that community date back to the 1920s when Alice and Henry Ferguson and a small group of Washington, DC, residents were attracted to the Potomac shoreline in Maryland’s Accokeek area. These local residents mobilized after World War II to preserve the rustic environment that they had come to appreciate and helped launch the movement leading to the creation of Piscataway Park. In the 1950s these Moyaone Reserve residents established the current Moyaone Association and joined forces with the newly formed Alice Ferguson Foundation and the Accokeek Foundation, along with the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA) to preserve the natural environment they valued and to preserve the viewshed from Mount Vernon. Over time, the NPS became more deeply involved working with these various organizations and with Congress to achieve their shared goals of creating a national park. Preservation of the historic view has depended to a great extent on effective cooperation and communication between the NPS and the park’s partners and stakeholders and continues to do so. Although President John F. Kennedy signed legislation formally authorizing the park in October 1961, the struggle to secure appropriations for the park, to acquire the additional lands within the Mount Vernon viewshed and to secure scenic easements from local property owners continued. The park was established through the conveyance of scenic easements by private landholders and the purchase of land in fee. These scenic easements were legally binding agreements between landowners and the easement holder (in this case the Department of the Interior) that restricted development and use of the land to achieve conservation goals. Meanwhile, during the early 1960s the Department of the Interior signed cooperative agreements with both the Accokeek Foundation and the Alice Ferguson Foundation defining their resp

Preservation and Partners: A History of Piscataway Park

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