Battery Cove Filled: A New Shipyard

Battery Cove Filled: A New Shipyard. . , Between 1911 and 1912, Battery Cove, the shallow bay extending from the southern edge of Keith's Wharf southward to Jones Point, was named for the Civil War Battery Rodgers and was used as a spoil dump for an extensive dredging project undertaken by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to improve navigation on the Potomac River and to revive trade along the waterfront. Approximately 47 acres of new land, about one-third of today's Ford's Landing site, were created by the deposit of the dredged soil., When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the new Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation established a yard on the reclaimed land of Battery Cove in order to produce ships for the war effort. The Federal government gave the firm a contract to construct twelve, 400-foot-long ships for a price of $2.5 million each. President Woodrow Wilson attended the keel laying of the first ship, Gunston Hall. Gunston Hall was not completed until early 1919, after the war had ended. With the cancellation of the government contract, the shipyard closed. Sections of the concrete bulkhead and shipways can still be seen from the north end of Jones Point Park., In 1922, the George Washington Stone Company reopened the famous white sandstone quarries down the Potomac at Aquia Creek. The Aquia Creek quarries had provided a great deal of the original building material for the White House, the Capitol and other public buildings of Washington and for many of the houses, taverns, churches of 18th- and 19th-century Alexandria. The stone company purchased the former Marine Railway property and used it to mill the stone and to ship it from their large pier or send it by rail over the six railways that served the site.