Analostan: The Archeology of Theodore Roosevelt Island

WSP USA Inc; John, Bedell; Tiffany, Raszick; Gregory, Katz

Theodore Roosevelt Island has a remarkable history that stretches back thousands of years. Ancient Native Americans settled here, and Europeans after them. A ferry crossed the river here, and a grand plantation was built and then went bankrupt. Civil War soldiers trained here, including the 1st Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops, raised in the District of Columbia. Here refugees found shelter, pretend knights staged mock medieval tournaments, and athletes competed in track meets while gamblers lurked in the shadows. Young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps worked to help their families during the Depression. Experimental aircraft were flown here, and an experimental explosive called “Jovite” was tested to see if rifle trenches could be blasted out faster than they could be dug with shovels. A monument was erected to one of our most famous presidents, and the island turned into a wooded park. And much else besides. The island has had at least three names, representing three stages of its history. The Algonquian-speaking Native Americans who lived along the Potomac called it Anacostien or Analostan, and those are the names that appear in colonial records. After the Mason family built a mansion on the island in the 1790s, people called it Mason Island, and after it was set aside to become his monument, it was renamed to honor Theodore Roosevelt. Each epoch left its mark in the island’s soil. In fact, from the point of view of an archeologist, the island has too much history. The entire island is an archeological site, rich with remains of the past, but because people have kept living and building on the same spots over and over, they have kept moving around the remains left by the people who came before them. Some of the residents tried to reshape the whole island to better suit their needs, leveling or terracing the ground, carving roads and paths, clearing fields or planting trees. Because of all this overlapping activity, the whole past is mixed up together. In one shovelful of dirt, you might find stone artifacts left thousands of years ago by Native Americans, glass left by European settlers, a bullet from the Civil War, and a ketchup packet from the 1990s. Unraveling all of this is not easy. The island belongs to the National Park Service (NPS), and it is administered as part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The National Park Service has a long-term plan to explore the archeological record of all its parks, so that the important sites can be preserved and interpreted. As part of that program, the National Capital Area of the NPS contracted with WSP USA Inc. (WSP) to carry out a two-year archeological survey of the island. The fieldwork for the survey was completed in 2018 and 2019. This document is Volume I of a two-volume report describing the results of that survey. Volume I is intended for park interpreters and the general public, and it omits sensitive data on the exact location of archeological sites. Volume II is intended for park planners and archeological professionals and includes much more technical data. More than 10,000 artifacts were found during the survey, everything from 116 stone tools to five U.S. pennies and a wrench, representing all periods from 9,000 years ago to the present. These objects add much to the island’s fascinating story and give us new ways of understanding our capital’s past.

Analostan: The Archeology of Theodore Roosevelt Island

Series