History at Four Mile Run Park

, Four Mile Run and the course of its namesake waterway have changed dramatically over the centuries, partly due to natural events and partly to modern human engineering. Although a setting for a rich abundance of plant and animal resources, today much of the park consists of a tidal marsh and forested swampland, the kind of environment not particularly conductive for long-term human habitation., Early Peoples , Approximately, 9,000 years ago small groups of American Indians began congregating seasonally along waterways like Four Mile Run, drawn by the abundant plant and animal resources growing and living there. These hunters and gatherers did not stay for long, but moved frequently to new areas to harvest. Over the course of thousands of years these groups left behind archaeological evidence in the form of chipped stone tools and later handmade pottery., Historic Settlement , In 1669, John Alexander became the first colonial settler to patent the land encompassing Four Mile Run Park as part of a 6,000 acre tract of land. Several generations of Alexanders owned the tract and gradually divided it into smaller parcels. The by 1740s John Alexander's great grandson of the same name held the land south of Four Mile Run, including what would become this park. The area remained vacant throughout the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries, likely because of the marshy, flood-prone environment. However during the Civil War, several Union Army militia units camped in the southwest portion of the park. By the late nineteenth century several small estates were built in the northern section of this park, generally along what would become Mount Vernon Avenue.,