The Long Story of The Jones Point Ropewalk (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this trailside historical marker:

The Long Story of The Jones Point Ropewalk
1833-1850
— Jones Point Park —

In 1833, Josiah Davis constructed a narrow, 400-yard-long building where rope was manufactured for ship's rigging, a once-thriving maritime industry for the nearby port of Alexandria.

[Caption:]
The Jones Point ropewalk was a two-story building with larger wheels than are pictured here, but the process of making rope was the same. Walking backward between two reels a spinner unwound lengths of hemp from around the waist and spun the fiber in each hand to create rope. A spinner could walk as much as 20 miles in a 10-hour workday.

Archaeological Evidence
Excavations at Jones Point revealed the remains of the ropewalk's foundations and a black stain down the middle—probably from the tar applied to cordage to resist rotting from seawater.

...every afternoon during the summer, it was the custom of the boys to go thither after school...to indulge in the luxury of a bath. They began to undress in the western part, and run naked through the long building...

At the entrance on the west there was a huge reel for rope, on which the boys used to stand and turn each other over, the rise and fall being probably twenty feet, and on occasion a boy threw out his back as he passed the second story window...

—Description of the abandoned Jones Point ropewalk, Academy Journal, June 3, 1873

In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their
threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

—Henry Worth Longfellow, 1859

Erected by National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Jones Point Ropewalk:
The Jones Point ropewalk was a two-story building with larger wheels than are pictured here, but the process of making rope was the same. Walking backward between two reels a spinner unwound lengths of hemp from around the waist and spun the fiber in each hand to create rope. A spinner could walk as much as 20 miles in a 10-hour workday.
Close-up of image on marker

The Ropewalk:
In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their
threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1859
Verse from The Ropewalk, in Birds of Passage by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Archaeological Evidence:
Excavations at Jones Point revealed the remains of the ropewalk's foundations and a black stain down the middle—probably from the tar applied to cordage to resist rotting from seawater.
Close-up of URS photo on marker.

The Jones Point Ropewalk (1300 feet):
Map showing the Jones Point Ropewalk, Jones Point and Alexandria, incised into the base on which the marker is mounted.