Early Alexandria and Keith's Wharf

Early Alexandria and Keith's Wharf. . , During the late 17th century, settlers began to establish small plantations near landing places on the Potomac River. Oceangoing ships could load tobacco and other goods for export to Great Britain. The area that was to become Alexandria was still sparsely settled by the 1740s, with a handful of tobacco warehouses and plantations worked by African-American slaves., The town of Alexandria was established here in 1749 because the site was the uppermost Virginia anchorage on the tidal Potomac. At the time, the town covered only about 21 blocks; its original southern boundary was located about three blocks north of here. It would grow quickly, however, and received a city charter in 1780., The river was the city's highway, providing the principal means of transport for goods and people. Alexandria quickly became an important regional market and an international exporter of tobacco, grain, pork, fish, lumber and other commodities, and importer of goods from London, Glasgow and other Atlantic and Caribbean ports. In 1795, Alexandria was the seventh-busiest port in the United States, with 1,000 vessels entering the port annually., Commercial prosperity encouraged further development of the waterfront. By 1790, merchants had filled in the river flats for as much as 400 feet beyond the original shoreline to create "superb wharves and vast warehouses." Several prominent men of the community, including Mayor James Keith and Captain John Harper, embarked on an unsuccessful development scheme to build a new market house on South Washington Street which would be linked by a dramatically widened Franklin Street to an extensive wharf and warehouses along the river. Construction of Keith's Wharf began in 1785, but, by 1804, it was still peripheral to waterfront commerce; it then served primarily as a fish wharf and ferry landing. The bulkhead of Keith's Wharf still exists beneath the Ford's Landing townhouses.[Captions:] , The inland roads of Fairfax County, Virginia are shown on this map, ca. 1745, attributed to surveyor Daniel Jennings. , (Illustration: Library of Congress), "A Plan of Alexandria now Belhaven," ca. 1749, was drawn to show the original town lots sold at auction and includes the names of the lots' purchasers. This site is approximately four blocks south of the town's original southern boundary. , (Illustration: Library of Congress), The City's many wharves can be seen on this 1804 map of Alexandria, then a part of the District of Columbia. , (Illustration: Library of Congress), This small, flat-bottomed boat, or bateau, measures 15 feet long by 4 feet wide and was unearthed during archaeological investigations in 1990. It remains underneath the Ford's Landing property. , (Illustration: Alexandria Archaeology), A cartouche from the 1751 Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia which depicts activities on a typical tobacco wharf. The construction of the wharf shown in the drawing is similar to Keith's Wharf. , (Illustration: Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority, John Carlyle House), The main bulkhead of Keith's Wharf was uncovered under the Ford's Landing property site during archaeological investigations in 1990. The bulkhead consisted of six or seven courses of timber hewn with a broadax. , (Illustration: Alexandria Archaeology), This reconstructed tobacco shed is similar to buildings that would have stood at the foot of Oronoco Street. , (Illustration: Alexandria Department of Planning)