Module 2: Transportation
Waterway as Highways
For most of the County’s history, Stafford residents relied on its navigable waterways to connect its people and goods to the rest of the world. The County’s ports and landings were the epicenters of daily life, frequently accompanied by stores, post offices, and churches. Landings and wharves along the Potomac River, Aquia Creek, Potomac Creek, and the Rappahannock River allowed residents to export tobacco, farm products, stone, timber, and iron while importing goods from throughout the eastern seaboard and Europe.
Stafford’s ferries were indispensable components of the Virginia transportation system. Unreliable roads, with their erodible soil, steep terrain, and numerous swamp and creek crossings made waterway navigation the obvious choice for transporting goods and people. For more than 2 centuries, Stafford County’s ferries carried founding fathers, presidents, and armies, while its merchant vessels supplied the eastern seaboard with food, stone, lumber, and iron.
4-mast schooner on the Potomac River, c. 1900, collection of Jerrilynn MacGregorSounds of Stafford
In the News
Alexandria Gazette, December 3, 1892Voices from the Past
“Coal Landing….was a good shipping point because the Creek was deep and the walls were good.” “…sawmill men, the farmers whoever they hauled it down to that point and Captain Knight had a big warehouse….and…store goods or grain or stuff could be stored in there, and shipped from there so it would out the weather. Of course, the lumber, railroad ties and wood……could lay out there, 'cause it wouldn't be there very long. But barges of a size of greater than 250 feet in length came in there and, of course, tugboats brought them and they would load them as deep as they could up in there and then they'd tow them outside the Creek and then with smaller barges, they'd load the ties on them and carried them outside the Creek until that barge was fully loaded to go to Philadelphia.” “….it was quite a movement.”
STAFFORD COUNTY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Interview of Milton A. Dickerson by A.R. MacGregor, III, July 29, 1986
Primary source for Stafford 1896: “Land of Herrings and Persimmons, People and Places of Upper Stafford County, Virginia,” Jerrilynn Eby MacGregor, Heritage Books, 2015
Discussion Topics
Why do we call the movement of goods “shipping?”
What kinds of materials do you think were shipped out of Stafford County ports?
What kinds of materials do you think were shipped into Stafford County ports?