Transcription
Dumfries' golden age just slipped away
By Maggie L. Lawson
Journal staff writer
Dumfries, chartered in 1749,
blossomed early. And if
things had gone differently,
the tiny metropolis just might have
grown into a thriving city.
At one time, it was even considered
as a possible site for the nation's
capital.
Consider the town in 1762, as described
by Ann Hoagland, curator of
the town's Weems-Botts Museum:
- The port of Dumfries rivaled
that of Boston or New York.
- The town had a number of
stores, a race track, several hotels, a
silversmith, a dance hall and a
theater.
- A major highway headed west
from Dumfries, intersecting what is
now Route One, the main road north
and south.
- Several thousand people lived
in the town, almost as many as live
there now. (The town's present population
is about 4,300.)
But the seeds of Dumfries' decline
already were sown in careless
husbandry.
Much of the soil of nearby tobacco-
producing farms was rapidly being
depleted. Farm owners cut down
too many trees, causing a tremendous
runoff of soil into the port at
Quantico Creek. The channel became
almost unnavigable.
In the end, the smaller waterway
prevented large ships from picking
up the major cash crop - tobacco.
But the market for tobacco also
declined because buyers found the
quality of the Virginia tobacco inferior
to that from other regions.
In the early 1800s, a canal opened
the clogged waterway, but several
years later it was destroyed by a
storm. The canal was never rebuilt.
The once-thriving town also became
home to an unwelcome pest. -
mosquitoes. The fetid swamp created
by the choked channel sent residents
to higher ground.
In 1822, the Prince William courthouse
was moved from Dumfries to
Brentsville.Transcriber
Adam KitchenLanguage
English