Wasteland or Wetland? (Historical Marker)
GPS Coordinates: 38.7775048, -77.0504373
Here follows the inscription written on this trailside historical marker:
Wasteland or Wetland?
What is Your Point of View?
— George Washington Memorial Parkway —
Here, 400 years ago, the Piscataway tribe fed themselves on fish and waterfowl. In the early 1800s, Virginia farmers built retaining walls, called dykes, to drain this marsh and make farmland. The dykes proved too hard to keep intact. Without dyles, in a matter of decades Potomac tides reclaimed this marsh.
By the 1950s, metropolitan Washington D.C. was booming. Developers dug gravel out of Dyke Marsh and dumped debris in its place. Gravel mining stopped in the early 1970s, but the erosion that digging started still harms Dyke Marsh today.
In 1974, Congress directed the National Park Service to protect and restore Dyke Marsh. Even now, there is much left to do. What we do today will determine if these wetlands ever truly recover.
Erected by National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.
More about this marker:
[Photo caption:]
It is easy to forget how rural Washington D.C. looked only 100 years ago
[Photo caption:]
Going ... Going ... Gone?
1937, 432 acres. 1959, 371 acres. 2005, 244 acres.