Battery Cove Filled: A New Shipyard (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this trailside historical marker:

Battery Cove Filled: A New Shipyard
Between 1911 and 1912, Battery Cove, the shallow bay extending from the southern edge of Keith's Wharf southward to Jones Point, was [unreadable] for the Civil War Battery Rodgers and was used as a small [unreadable] for an extensive dredging project undertaken by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to improve navigation on the Potomac River and to revive trade along the waterfront. Approximately 47 acres of new land, about one-third of today's Ford's Landing site, were [unreadable] deposit of the dredged soil.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the new Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation established a yard [unreadable] land of Battery Cove in order to produce ships for the war effort. The [unreadable] a contract to construct twelve, 400-foot-long ships for a price of [unreadable]. President Woodrow Wilson attended the christening of the first ship, Gunston Hall. Gunston Hall was not completed until early 1918, after the war had ended. With the cancellation of the government contract, the shipyard closed. Sections of the concrete bulkhead and shipways can still be seen from the north end of Jones Point Park.

1922, the George Washington Stone Company reopened the [unreadable] sandstone quarries down the Potomac at Aquia Creek. The Aquia Creek quarries had provided a great deal of the original building material for the White House, the Capitol and other public buildings of Washington and for many of the houses, taverns, churches of 18th- and 19th-century Alexandria. The stone [unreadable] purchased the former Marine Railway property and used it to mill the stone and to ship it from their large pier or send it by rail over the six railways that served the site.