Park Site Connections – The MVT’s Got Them

/ Friends of Mount Vernon Trail

The 99 page Mount Vernon Trail Study was recently published by the National Park Service and chocked full of information about the trail along with recommendations for improvement. To make the study more digestible, we’ll be pulling out interesting tidbits over a series of posts.

At 7,300 acres the George Washington Memorial Parkway contains over two dozen Park sites, many of which are accessible from the Mount Vernon Trail. The list provided in the study is below. Can you identify the two we think are in error?

• Belle Haven Park and Marina
• Collingwood Picnic Area
• Daingerfield Island
• Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve
• Fort Hunt Park
• Fort Marcy
• Gravelly Point
• Jones Point Park and Lighthouse
• Lady Bird Johnson Park
• Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac
• Memorial Avenue/Arlington Memorial Bridge
• Navy and Marine Memorial
• Riverside Park
• Roaches Run Waterfowl Sanctuary
• Theodore Roosevelt Island

It appears that Fort Marcy was included in error. Fort Marcy is located near Chain Bridge. We’d also argue that Roaches Run Waterfowl Sanctuary should not be included on the list. Although it’s visible from the Mount Vernon Trail, there is no connection to the Sanctuary that doesn’t involve driving a car or darting across multiple lanes of a busy section of the Parkway.

We also think there’s a few sites that should be added that are not exactly on the trail but are easily reached by trail:

  • Abington Plantation – this house is located between parking garages at the airport and is easily reachable by the airport access trail.
  • Arlington House – Located in Arlington National Cemetery with direct trail access. Park at the visitor’s center though. Bikes are not allowed on the grounds of the cemetery.
  • Iwo Jima and Netherlands Carillon – Both are just a short connector trail away from Arlington National Cemetery.

Stay tuned for more tidbits or read the full study at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/showFile.cfm?projectID=95147&MIMEType=application%252Fpdf&filename=Final%20Mount%20Vernon%20Trail%20Corridor%20Study%2Epdf&sfid=424173

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