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Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm

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Coordinates: 38°48′17″N 77°00′43″W / 38.8046°N 77.01182°W / 38.8046; -77.01182
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Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm
IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape)
Map showing the location of Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm
Map showing the location of Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm
Map of the United States
Map showing the location of Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm
Map showing the location of Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm
Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm (Maryland)
LocationPrince George's County, Maryland, US and Washington, DC
Nearest cityForest Heights, Maryland, Washington, DC
Coordinates38°48′17″N 77°00′43″W / 38.8046°N 77.01182°W / 38.8046; -77.01182
Established1959
Governing bodyNational Park Service
Oxon Cove Park
Oxon Hill Farm, December 2010
LocationGovernment Farm Rd., Forest Heights, Maryland
Area289 acres (117 ha)
Architectural styleItalianate, et al.
NRHP reference No.03000869[1]
Added to NRHPSeptember 02, 2003

Oxon Cove Park is a 485 acre large national historic district with portions in Prince George's County, Maryland and Washington, D.C. operated by the National Park Service as part of National Capital Parks-East. It includes a living farm museum, Oxon Cove Farm, located at Oxon Hill in the Maryland portion of the park. The other 220 acres of the site are former landfill.[2]

The park is a resource for environmental studies, wildlife observing, fishing, and other recreational activities made possible by easy access to the Potomac River. Fourteen buildings and two structures are located in the historic district and associated with the property's sequential development as a plantation, an institutional agricultural complex, and a farm museum.

It is bounded by Interstate 295 on the south, Indian Head Highway on the east and the District of Columbia on the north.[2]

The 289 acre farm portion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.[1]

History

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Before European settlers arrived, the Piscataway Indian people farmed the land along the Potomac River in the area.

Mount Welby

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In 1787, Nicholas Lingan purchased 270 acres of property that included the land where Oxon Hill Manor sits and much of Oxon Hill Farm. And it was likely during his ownership that the Mount Welby house was built.[3]

From the late 17th century to the early 19th century, another part of the farm was owned by John Addison and his descendants who grew tobacco, oats and corn on the land using enslaved people to do so. Part of the estate was known as Oxon Hill Manor at the time.

In 1811, Dr. Samuel DeButts, a native of Sligo, Ireland bought part of the Lingan property and renamed it Mount Welby in honor of his wife's family. He oversaw a diversified farm through the practice of slavery. Ownership of the land passed to his wife when he died in 1815 and their son John Henry when she passed away in 1826. The land transferred to his children following his 1832 death< His children - who had moved to Fauquier County - sold the land in 1843. [4][3]

Godding Croft

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During the rest of the 19th century the land changed hands many times until the federal government bought it, and an adjoining 100 acres, in 1891 as a farm, known as Godding Croft, to provide food for patients at nearby St. Elizabeths Hospital.

In 1937 the District of Columbia began using much of the park's land outside of the farm, on both the DC and Maryland sections, as a disposal area and landfill. They filled the site with dredged sediments from Oxon Cove and the Potomac River channel, excess soil and construction materials from the construction of I-295 and the Metrorail system, and sludge/solids from the nearby Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant.[5] Prior to the landfill operations, the northern area consisted of undeveloped wetlands and open water known as Oxon Bay, and the eastern area consisted of agricultural fields and wetlands.

Encroaching of the urban environment and increasing cost of labor spelled the end of the farm. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act enacted a 40 hour work week that made it hard to afford farm workers. In the 1940's Maryland built Indian Head Highway across the farm. In 1954 the government agreed to sell a 22 acre section that had been cut off by the highway to Prince George's County for a middle school, but then in 1956 it was swapped with the Maryland State Roads Commission for the construction of the Indian Highway/495 interchange.[6][7]

Farming ended at Godding Croft in the 1960s.

Park Service

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In 1967, the National Park Service arranged with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to use the farm as a children's animal farm and it was later transferred to NPS. It was added to lands that NPS purchased to the south in 1961-62 from the estate of William T. Sellner.[3]

At this time Oxon Cove Park was formed and welcomed its first visitors. For some time it was known as the Oxon Hill Children's Farm.[8]

In 1969, the District transitioned landfilling operations from the Kenilworth Park Landfill to the Oxon Cove Landfill. From October 1969 to June 1972, the District disposed of approximately 1,500,000 tons of municipal waste and 275,000 tons of incinerator ash in the Park. During this time, the District also disposed of sludge generated at the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant. They stopped using it as landfill, after they were ordered by the courts to stop, in early July 1972.[9][10][11]

In 1970 NPS commissioned a plan that recommended transforming the landfill and farm into a golf course with 4 holes in DC and 14 in Maryland with a driving range, a children's farm, a youth hostel, day camp, scenic overlook, amphitheater, plant nursery and two marinas.[2] Shortly after the dump was closed NPS began construction of the golf course, which included covering it in a waste, wood chips and grass mixture but it was paused while they considered using part of the DC land to dump sludge compost for the Blue Plains Water Treatment facility.[12] During this time the DC portion of the park was considered for a swamp gas well, a women's prison and an urban farm while the land sat idle.[13][14][15][16] For the gas well, PEPCO went so far as to construct a ventilation building on the site.[3]

The golf course was never completed and in 1988 NPS created a new plan that recommended creating a turn of the century farm and a community garden in the farm section and converting the landfill to playfields, a DC tree nursery, a fishing pier and boat ramp all accessibly by a new access road and trails and it removed the golf course from the plan.[17][18][2]

In the 1990s the Park service built a 3.9 mile paved trail around the park and connected to DC via a bridge across Oxon Creek built in the 1980s.[19]

In 2002, NPS initiated environmental investigations of the landfill site pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The first phase of that investigation indicated that the soil, groundwater, and sediments are impacted by relatively low concentrations of hazardous substances typically found in municipal waste landfills and sludges generated from wastewater treatment plants. In 2024, NPS began the next step of the CERCLA process called the remedial investigation.[20]

In 2015, the town of Forest Heights, MD annexed the Maryland part of the park to connect the town to its publicly owned spaces so it can make better planning decisions.[21]

Oxon Hill Farm

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The Oxon Hill Farm includes the Mount Welby home, Farm Museum, barns, a stable, feed building, livestock buildings and a visitor activity barn. Farm animals include cows, horses and chickens. Visitors can view the animals up close daily and learn about the workings of a farm. The Farm Museum building displays historical farm equipment dating from the late 19th century.

The district also includes a hexagonal frame outbuilding; c. 1830 brick root cellar; c. 1973 frame hog house; c. 1890 frame horse and pony barn; c. 1991 frame chicken house; c. 1970 steel-frame implement shed; c. 1980 frame visitor barn; c. 1970 steel-frame windmill; c. 1940 frame hay barn; c. 1890 frame feed building; c. 1830 brick stable; c. 1970 frame tool shed; c. 1980 frame "sorghum sirip" shed; and a c. 1980 frame dairy barn, and c. 1940 tile silo. From the 1890s to 1950s, under the ownership of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, the site was used as a therapeutic treatment center for the mentally ill known as Godding Croft. The Oxon Cove Farm historic district is located on the crest of a ridge overlooking the Potomac River, north of I-95 and very close to National Harbor.[22]

Mount Welby

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The principal dwelling, known as "Mount Welby," is a c. 1807–1811 two-story three-bay brick structure laid in Flemish bond with Italianate detailing and sheltered by a shed roof, and visible to motorists crossing the interstate Woodrow Wilson Bridge. The house was entrusted to the National Park Service in 1959 in order to protect its resources from increased development.[23]

The house is operated as a historic house museum, with exhibits about period life in the early 19th century for the owners and slaves on the plantation. Other exhibits focus on the home's role at Godding Croft.

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  • NPS Official "Oxon Hill Farm / Oxon Cove Park Fall View," November 2008
    NPS Official "Oxon Hill Farm / Oxon Cove Park Fall View," November 2008
  • Mt. Welby and Root Cellar, December 2010
    Mt. Welby and Root Cellar, December 2010
  • Mt. Welby, December 2010
    Mt. Welby, December 2010
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. ^ a b c d Illustrative Plan for Oxon Cove. 1988. Retrieved February 11, 2025.
  3. ^ a b c d "UDSI/NPS NRHP Registration Form Oxon Cove Farm" (PDF). Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  4. ^ "Foundation Document Overview Oxon Cove Park" (PDF). Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  5. ^ Mitchell, Grayson (February 18, 1973). "Truckers Running Out of Dump Sites". The Washington Post.
  6. ^ "Bill Allows County to Buy St. Elizabeths Farm Tract". Washington Evening Star. June 23, 1954.
  7. ^ "Md. Belt Road Asks Site Swap". The Washington Post. April 11, 1956.
  8. ^ "Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm". The historical marker Database. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
  9. ^ "Oxon Cove Landfill Environmental Cleanup". Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  10. ^ "D.C. to Stop Dumping At Oxon Cove by 1972". The Washington Post. April 28, 1972.
  11. ^ Scharfenberg, Kirk (July 4, 1972). "New Incinerator 5 Delayed, City to Use Oxon Cove 9 Days". The Washington Post.
  12. ^ McCoubrey, Daniel (April 6, 1967). "D.C. Golfers Face Better Days". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 10, 2025.
  13. ^ Hodge, Paul (January 6, 1977). "Trying to cope wiith a 600-ton-a-day sludge problem, naturally". The Washington Post.
  14. ^ Thompson, Cheryl W. (October 8, 1998). "Prison Company Assailed". The Washington Post.
  15. ^ Hodge, Paul (December 6, 1979). "Park Service Hopes to Tap Gas 'Lakes' Under Garbage Dumps". The Washington Post.
  16. ^ Nucklos, Ben (December 23, 2014). "DC farm site is ecological disaster". The Associated Press. Retrieved January 30, 2025.
  17. ^ Hodge, Paul (December 19, 1981). "1 of 3 Public Links in D.C. Closed". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 7, 2025.
  18. ^ "Sludge Odors Causing a Stink". The Washington Post. December 1, 1973.
  19. ^ Hodge, Paul (January 14, 1993). "New Bike Trail Within Va. Riders' Reach". The Washington Post.
  20. ^ "Oxon Cove Landfill Environmental Cleanup". Retrieved January 30, 2025.
  21. ^ "Hidden in plain sight, Oxon Cove Park strives to attract more visitors". Bay Journal. February 10, 2016. Retrieved February 7, 2025.
  22. ^ Kathryn Kuranda; Hugh McAloon & Michelle Moran (September 1994). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Oxon Cove Farm" (PDF). Maryland Historical Trust. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
  23. ^ Oxon Cove Park: History & Culture
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