We have been lacking a little in the content lately. Fortunately, there’s a reason: we bought a house!
The new Offbeat Nova HQ (Matthew Eng Photo)
Both Angela and I are very excited about this. It’s something we have talked about for a very long time, for sure. If we are going to be exploring northern Virginia history for the indefinite future, it made sense to truly put down our roots in the area.
So, instead of exhausting ourselves trying to put something out that we might not be completely happy with, we decided to let everyone know what is in on the short list for upcoming posts. Enjoy.
The Fairfax “Butt Slasher” (Fairfax County) For six months in 2011, a man known as the “Butt Slasher” terrorized women in northern Virginia in shopping malls. Women were warned to “keep track of their behinds” while shopping and pay close attention to their surroundings.
Bunnyman Bridge (Clifton) You may have heard about it. Is it an urban legend, real, or just a joke? We take a look at the “Bunnyman” of Clifton and the bridge where he supposedly hanged his victims. This will be a collaborative post with Uncanny America.
Top Golf Alexandria (Fairfax County) It was the first Top Golf in America. Now it sits abandoned and derelict near a busy shopping area in Fairfax County. We explore the history and complicated business plan of Top Golf Alexandria.
Offbeat Eats: Egg Foo Young in Suburbia (Gainesville) This new segments explores some of the best food off the beaten path. Our first segment will showcase a small and unassuming Chinese restaurant in Gainesville, VA, and the incredible egg dish with a unique connection to American history.
Offbeat Eats: Steak and Ale’s “Kensington Club” Recipe (Alexandria) If you’ve traveled anywhere near the Mark Center in Alexandria, chances are you have seen the abandoned Steak n’ Ale restaurant with its iconic sign. We look at the restaurant itself and recreate one of its signature steak recipes to taste test.
All You Fascists Bound To Lose (Arlington) We revisit the site of the murder of George Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, in a small Arlington strip mall. Just in time for the election.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kublah Khan
I can’t recall where I first heard about the Potomac Arks. I might have been doing some research for another project when some small mention of them caught my eye—the floating brothels of the Potomac. And somehow, when I was imagining these boats, small snatches of Coleridge’s fragmented poem would come to mind: opulence, metaphorical pleasures, and the river.
Intrigued, I decided to research more, and soon found out that the Potomac River was filled with these brothel boats in the years after the Civil War up until sometime between the 1920s and 1940s.
According to John Wennersten’s Historic Waterfront of Washington, “As Washington became a center of military and industrial activity [during the Civil War], it also became a city awash in a tidal wave of cash . . . Prostitution, an activity long associated with the Potomac waterfront, increased dramatically.”1 Around the same time, local boat builders invented the “Potomac Ark,” an inexpensive houseboat that could house fishermen and shipyard workers.2 Frederick Tilp, author of This Was Potomac River, described what these boats were like:
The standard specifications called for a boat 24 feet by 10 feet by 12 inches draft, with a flat bottom and square ends. It would have cedar clapboard siding, red-painted flat-tin roof, two windows, two doors, and would be lighted by kerosene lamps, and would use a coal fired stove for heating and cooking. Arks moored at the water’s edge, rested on the bottom at low tide, and poling and rowing were their only means of propulsion.3
Frederick Tilp, This Was Potomac River
Though these boats were designed for fishermen and shipyard workers, pollution caused fishing and shipbuilding to decline; eventually, the arks were sold to sex workers that operated close to the river.4 In time, the river was filled with hundreds of floating brothel boats. By the early 1900s, the arks began to spread beyond the confines of Washington and to nearby cities in Maryland and Virginia. These states were safe havens for the arks because Alexandria had “sympathetic politicians and influential gentry,” while Maryland State Police were “too busy chasing oyster pirates.”5
Tilp described the ark operations as a “‘one woman” type of enterprise. Each woman ran her own business on her own ark, at whatever location she pleased.6 Parke Rouse, in a Daily Press article about historical bawdy houses in Virginia, quoted the Virginia Canals and Navigations Society’s description of the arks: “small floating houses of prostitution, most of them painted white or blue (the more high-class boats usually were white with blue roofs and shutters) lined the shores and clustered around gambling casino boats.”7
Madame Rose’s “Dream” (Frederick Tilp)
The most famous of these arks, according to Tilp, was the only known two-story houseboat named the Dream, run by a lady named Madam Rose. Though there is little mention of the arks in the press during this time period, the Dream was featured in a 1905 Alexandria Gazette article. The article stated that the infamous brothel survived a “terrible northwest storm” and the “scenes of revelry on board were not checked by the wild outside elements” and small boats “continued during day and night, carrying patrons to and fro.”8 Tilp, when citing the article in his book, also mentioned a second opulent boat the Dream’s owner was building, “patterned after one belonging to the King of Siam.”9 Unfortunately, like the majority of these boats, its fate is unknown.
Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, August 14, 1905.
These brothels and gambling arks flourished because Virginia had no jurisdiction over the river and because Maryland and the District ignored them.”10 A Washington Post article from 1905, when describing a gambling ark that frequented the waters just outside of Alexandria, acknowledged that “The Ark is slow but clumsy, but she flirts airingly outside the law . . . If the Ark happens to be lying inside the District line and the metropolitan officers attempt to raid her, the anchor is up in a trice and in thirty seconds she has drifted into Maryland or Virginia, beyond the reach of pursuing officials.”11 Likewise, if Maryland or Virginia police attempted a raid, the boat would then cross back over into the District. Similarly, these brothel arks evaded the law.
A popular spot for these boats was Jones Point, Alexandria. Here, the boundary lines between Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. all intersected, so it was easy for these arks to operate in the waters just beyond the city. Now a park, Jones Point has the original D.C. boundary stones and the point lighthouse preserved. A historical marker at the lighthouse even mentions these arks. The marker specifies that the oil that fueled the lighthouse lamp was red for a time, which coincided with the height of popularity for the arks, thus making the waters of the Potomac a literal “red light district.”12
Jones Point Lighthouse (Matthew Eng Photo)
And so these illicit businesses boomed until the late 1920s, when the surveys for George Washington Highway began.13 Donald Shomette, a Mallows Bay historian,14 notes that the Potomac Arks saw a resurgence during the great Depression, since scavengers would come to the wrecks in Mallows Bay and acquire scrap metal; as a result, the colonies of bootleggers, gamblers, and prostitutes thrived once more.15 Though I can’t recall where I might have read it, supposedly the remains of some of those boats are among the shipwrecks in Maryland’s Mallows Bay. Though the arks would survive through World War II, they were entirely wiped out by the 1960s.16 The last known photograph of an ark is in Tilp’s nautical tome; taken in 1957, the photo shows a small ark in Great Hunting Creek, Virginia.
And so the Potomac Ark disappeared from history. Until 1993, that is. Alexandria city workers had started demolishing a blighted part of the Alexandria waterfront and ceased operations when they discovered that the structure was part of a wooden barge sunken in the dirt.17 The Washington Post continues, “City historians quickly arrived and declared it an ark, probably built about 1900, and the only known survivor among the thousands of houseboats, gambling barges and floating brothels that lined the Potomac River from the Civil War to after World War II.” Though historians could not ascertain what the use of this particular ark was, there’s no doubt it is a unique and priceless part of history on the Potomac.
Alexandria Seaport Foundation (Matthew Eng Photo)
The ark was given to the Alexandria Seaport Foundation. The foundation restored the ark and it now serves as the McIlhenny Seaport Center, the headquarters for the foundation. The foundation assists troubled youth through mentoring and teaching woodworking and boat construction.
It’s funny to think that this ark may have once been a gambling house or brothel, but now serves as a safe haven for troubled youth. That’s pretty cool to me.
Footnotes:
Wennersten, John R. The Historic Waterfront of Washington, D.C. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014.
Frederick Tilp, This Was Potomac River (Bladensburg: Tilp, 1987), 306.
Tilp, Potomac River, 306.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Parke Rouse, “Bawdy Houses Abounded in Virginia.” dailypress.com, August 16, 2019. Accessed it September 17, 2020, LINK.
“Aquatic Temptations,” Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, August 14, 1905.
Tilp, Potomac River, 308.
Rouse, “Bawdy Houses.”
“Houseboat for Gamblers: Gamesters Revel on Former Ferryboat Moored Near Alexandria,” The Washington Post, Mar 18, 1907.
The historical marker is located just south of the Jones Point lighthouse in Jones Point Park, Alexandria, VA.
Tilp, Potomac River, 308.
Mallows Bay, Maryland, is the marine sanctuary where, per the website, “protects and interprets the remnants of more than 100 World War I-era wooden steamships – known as the ‘Ghost Fleet’ – and other maritime resources and cultural heritage.”
As quoted in Fenston, Jacob and Tyrone Turner, “Ghost Fleet: Exploring The WWI Skeleton Ships Of The Potomac.” WAMU 88.5, October 22, 2019. Accessed September 16, 2020, LINK.
Tilp, Potomac River, 308.
Hodge, Paul. “Discovering a Lost Ark.” The Washington Post. WP Company, February 18, 1993. Accessed September 16, 2020, LINK.
(This is the last edition of a three-part series on Alexandria’s historic Wilkes Street Tunnel. Read PART I | Read PART II)
Matthew Eng, Offbeat NOVA
PART III: Out of the Dark and Into the Light
The Wilkes Tunnel, once a fixture of the local newspaper in the mid to late 1900s, lost its journalistic spotlight at the dawn of the twentieth century. The tunnel never made large headlines again and retreated to the minutiae of daily life. Minor repairs were done at the turn of the century, such as new safety signals in 1899 that regulated the speed of the incoming trains to a more respectable five miles per hour. Public opinion remained unchanged into the new century. By 1905, citizens still lodged ineffective complaints against the tunnel, particularly the east end. Under the headline of “A Dangerous Trap,” a May 12, 1905, article pulled out all the old theatrics of Alexandrians nearly two generations ago. “Sooner or later some careless child or nurse will precipitate a baby carriage and its occupant to the railroad track below, or a pedestrian tumble down the incline in the night, when a damage suit against the city will follow,” the article mused. Not long after that article was written, a young child happened fulfill the complaintive prophecy and fall into the tunnel. A young boy named Norton, a resident of tunnel town, fell into the tunnel just in front of his home off Wilkes Street in early September 1907. He as in fact the second child to fall in the tunnel that year. It became such an issue that the city Mayor at the time, F.J. Paff, to create a fence around the Western entrance. It was never confirmed if a fencing was put in place, as the complaints continued in the first decade of the new century.
A collection of articles from the early 20th century about the Wilkes Tunnel (Alexandria Gazette)
Vagrants were caught playing poker in the concealed light of the tunnel’s entrances. Other children continued to jump on railcars and use the tunnel like some long-gone fortification to throw stones at railcars and pedestrians passing by. On April Fool’s Day 1911, the Gazette reported a prehistoric skeleton of a mastodon was “unearthed” from the east end of the runnel where the railroad company was making repairs. It was enough news for a small crowd of excitable residents to congregate at the tunnel the next morning, only to find the ruse a product of the mere changing of a calendar page and a forgetful public gullible enough to belief such a ruse.1
During the First World War, the tunnel was deepened to accommodate higher boxcars for the war effort. A recent archaeological investigation by the Office of Historical Alexandria unearthed a second rail line curving at Union Street and converging at the eastern end of the Wilkes Tunnel near a recent park construction. According to Archaeologist Garrett Fesler, the track was built between 1921 and 1941 before ultimately disappearing by 1964.2 Four years later in 1968, the Wilkes Tunnel was included in the first state-wide survey conducted by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER). The sketches reside on the Library of Congress’s website. By this time, the surveyor sketching the drawing noted that the tunnel now lied “abandoned in the heart of Alexandria.”
The tunnel continued in use until 1975 when the tracks were removed, this time for good. The tunnel was soon repurposed as the pedestrian and bike pathway as it stands today. Somewhere between then and today, a historical marker was placed forward of the eastern entrance, detailing the history and legacy of the tunnel. That faded sign, like the tunnel, has also seen its better days. Plaques on the western end of the tunnel tell more of the tunnel’s history and connection to the once influential railroad that traversed through it. It’s hard to tell if anyone notices beyond the casual tourist or the jogger taking a short breather.
The closure of the tunnel was likely due to the decline of industrial activity on the Alexandria waterfront. The Old Town area has only increased in popularity in the years since the tunnel’s closure, becoming a Northern Virginia showpiece of new posh ships, stores, and restaurants still showing a feint veneer of the city’s past. The heart of this area is the regal intersection of King Street and Union the very road where the former Orange and Alexandria track once passed through before curving into the Wilkes Tunnel a half mile later.
Nearby Hoof’s Run Bridge, on the National Register since 2003 (Matthew Eng Photo)
The tunnel is not currently listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Alexandria is a city where you can’t throw a stone without finding the rounded bronze plaque bequeathed by the Department of the Interior. In all, there are forty-nine properties and districts listed under the National Register in the city of Alexandria. That includes six National Historic Landmarks (like the Historic District itself or Gadsby’s Tavern). The Wilkes Tunnel does not apply to either. Interestingly enough, the only other surviving portion of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad present down the street from the tunnel, the Hoof’s Run Bridge, has been on the National Register since 2003. In the nomination form for the bridge, the author references the “tunnel in Alexandria” on multiple occasions but treats it as the lesser of two surviving structures to the now-defunct railroad. Perhaps those deep-seeded misgivings of the residents of “tunnel town” were too much after all.3
That doesn’t mean the tunnel has left the public eye in recent years. In the Internet information age, the tunnel has made a resurgence of interest in travel websites, biking blogs, Yelp reviews, and Flickr pages. It’s a popular place for local couples to take wedding or engagement photos. If they only knew the irony of those photos given its history and connection to unchecked domestic violence. Less than a mile away from the Old Town Alexandria Ghost Tour hub on King Street, the tunnel has made its rounds among the macabre musings of several amateur writers such as this humble entry into the historical/pop culture lexicon. If anything, the tunnel is photogenic and short enough for light to pass through your camera lens, making it eerie, but not eerie enough.
Define Irony: Taking engagement photos in a tunnel where a jealous husband tried to kill his younger, spendthrift wife (Google Image Screenshot)
Looking at Google Maps, the overhead satellite map shows the curved road where the track from Union Street bent sharply into the Wilkes Street Tunnel. That is where the high-priced townhomes are located today, standing guard like affluent sentinels standing guard over their not-so historic landmark. How many have actually contemplated the tunnel’s history before passing through it?
High-priced condominiums nearby the tunnel’s eastern entrance off Union Street (Matthew Eng Photo)
A small park called Windmill Hill just over the bluff where Fairfax Street passes over the tunnel, providing the bookend to the overpriced homes of the city’s nouveau riche on the right of the eastern entrance. There is a spacious basketball court and playground where kids play; no doubt they are local to the area. One would highly doubt they refer to themselves as residents of “tunnel town” today as they did so long ago.
Walking through the tunnel, you don’t feel any “cold spots” that some bloggers love to pontificate about in their content. You can still see the simplistic vaulted sandstone walls as you walk into it. The farther you walk in, the more you take in the landmark’s dank, mossy bouquet, especially on a warm day. At the tunnel’s center point, approximately half of the one-hundred-and-seventy-foot distance, it is very dark, even in the daytime. Your mind does wonder if you are standing at the exact point where Private Scotten was murdered. Where they dragged the dead body to be crushed by a passing train during the Civil War. And, of course, where Mollie McKinley struggled with her violent husband before being shot four times. You walk in the same blood-soaked path she did in near darkness before she sought help out into the daylight. You don’t feel an otherworldly presence while you are in the tunnel, but your mind will at least wander with its strange and complex history carefully in tow.
Graffiti inside the tunnel (Matthew Eng Photo)
Very little else of the historic track remains in Alexandria. But then again, Alexandria is no longer the type of city that sustains railroads, foundries, and tanneries as it did in its commercial and industrial heyday. The tunnel once attracted anything form concerned parents, drunkards, vagrants, to the occasional murderer. Nowadays, it’s a breezeway for runners and bicyclists’ daily workout regimen. The tunnel, in many cases, is one of the few remaining pieces of that city’s history untainted by gentrification and modern conveniences. The city that exists around it today is much different. Alexandria, for better or worse, has evolved into tunnel town’s polar opposite. “It wasn’t always high-priced townhomes, archaeologist Garrett Fesler once said. “It was a working, thriving city.” Whatever tiny part the Wilkes Tunnel played in that narrative; it kept its working class literally on track.
Footnotes
Alexandria Gazette, September 4, 1907; Alexandria Gazette, April 1, 1911.
Evan Berkowitz, “Construction Unearths 20th-Century Railroad Tracks,” Alexandria Times, July 20, 2017. Accessed 12 July 2020, Link.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources, “Orange and Alexandria Railroad’s Hoof’s Run Bridge,” PDF Upload (April 2018), Accessed 11 July 2020, Link.
(This is the second of a three-part series on Alexandria’s historic Wilkes Street Tunnel. Read PART I)
Matthew Eng, Offbeat NOVA
PART II: The Curious Case of Mollie McKinney
Naturally, the track fell into disrepair during the Reconstruction period, adding insult to the already dilapidated condition of the tunnel. At one point, there was a resolution that instructed the Committee on Streets to take steps to have the problematic east end of the tunnel walled in and filled. The resolution never gained any speed and was soon forgotten.1
After the Panic of 1873, the railroad consolidated into the Virginia Midland Railway, one of the many times the tracks under the tunnel would change corporate hands before ultimately meeting its end as a rail tunnel over a hundred years later. The tunnel became a popular place for young boys and aspiring prepubescent vagabonds to congregate, arousing the suspicions of the citizens of tunnel town. The police reported several instances of vagrancy for these boys, who had the habit of jumping from the top of the tunnel onto the passing cards below. “This is an exceedingly dangerous practice,” said one concerned citizen, “and should be put a stop to by police before some of these bold children are crushed under cars.” Meanwhile, the tunnel continued to be as one person put it, “not only unsightly, but dangerous.” The people of tunnel town and Alexandria would soon find out how dangerous it could be on an unusually cool day in the late summer of 1882.2
Alexandria Gazette, August 17, 1882
Twenty-two-year-old James Cliff walked with his young wife Mollie McKinney on the morning of August 16, 1882, to the Potomac Ferry Company Wharf. Mr. Cliff’s sixteen-year-old bride fancied a trip to Washington, D.C. Money was tight for the young couple. Mollie had allegedly come up with funds for a nice trip into the big city. At the time, the couple had only been married for about five months. Three months after they were married, Mr. Cliff was let go from his job as a tinsmith due to poor health, draining their cash flow considerably. Although he protested her trip that morning, he insisted on escorting his wife. Mr. Cliff suggested they take a shortcut to the ferry on King Street through the Wilkes Street tunnel. Midway through the tunnel, at its darkest and most concealed point, James slapped his wife and drew a small caliber pistol and proceeded to fire several shots at her. Mollie was hit in four places: on her right ear, on her head above the ear, in the fleshy muscle of her right arm, and her left hand. Ms. McKinney’s screams were heard by several people in the neighborhood, yet nobody seemed to detect foul play at first glance. Two young boys who happened to be walking through the tunnel at the time of the struggle had a visual on the struggle in question. Upon hearing Mollie’s cries, they approached the helpless woman before being told by Mr. Cliff to turn around and leave, who reportedly fired two shots at them. Mrs. Cliff emerged from the tunnel moments later, visibly weeping and covered in her own blood. Mr. Cliff followed close behind his wife, carrying himself cool and calm as if the recent burst of violence were merely a lover’s quarrel.3
Mr. Cliff stopped to chat with several parties in attendance nearby, admitting to them that he had in fact shot his wife. “So great was the surprise at his action,” the article stated, “that no one attempted to arrest him.” He proceeded to walk casually down Royal Street in the direction of the canal. Several women encountered the gravely wounded Mollie McKinney on the corner of Royal and Wilkes and escorted her home. After nearly passing out from blood loss, the helpful women brought her back to life until a doctor arrived to remove what projectiles he could out of her body. The doctor removed the balls from her hand and arm but waited to remove those in her ear and head until she had “calmed down.” The wounds were serious, but not fatal, thankfully.4
Mollie was hit in four places on her body by her husband, James Cliff.
A crowd soon formed around the house of Mollie McKinney. Oddly enough, it took a great amount of time before anyone in the vicinity began to search for the husband who had walked away from the crime scene so calmly and casually. What kind of man was he, and what possessed him to make an attempt on his wife’s life?
James Cliff had spent the better part of two months sick with consumption, which forced him out of his job, unfit and unable to work. Mollie, not one to shy for the finer things of life, asked for fine clothes, food, and companionship, which her husband answered with jealousy, physical abuse, and emotional abuse. This was all well documented by those that knew the couple. Neighbors reported that Mr. Cliff was known to “whip” his wife, but not in a manner that would suspect further efforts of deeper foul play. His friends said he was possibly insane. Yet in the realm of Gilded Age romance, Mr. Cliff and Mrs. McKinney had forgivable differences. Mollie’s habit of seeking “lively company” made Mr. Cliff insanely jealous, which was likely the prime motive for the attempted murder. Such behavior is never an excuse, however distasteful it may be to a sick husband strapped for cash at the beginning of an unhappy marriage, for murder. For all intents and purposes, he casually walked away from the city unmolested.5
After the altercation, James Cliff took the Washington Road outside the Alexandria jurisdiction where he waited until evening when he returned to the city feeling too weak from his illness to move further. He went directly to his sister’s house on Duke Street. His sister proceeded to call for the police who took him into custody. The Alexandria Gazette reporter met with Mr. Cliff in his jail cell the following morning to speak to him about what happened. When the reporter arrived, Mr. Cliff was reading the very report on the incident published that morning. He then preceded to tell his side of the story, correcting the report’s ostensible misinformation “in a very indifferent manner.”6
Much of the offender’s account played out like the article from the previous day. Mr. Cliff insisted that it was his wife’s own idea to go to the wharf for the express purpose of borrowing money for a trip to Washington. Mr. Cliff stated that his wife had not secured money for a tryst in the big city quite yet. How she would get it was up for speculation. The tunnel route, in his eyes, was her idea. He also said that he had a very loving marriage with Mollie until he got sick. It was only after this that she “would never stay with a consumptive man, hoping God might paralyze her if she did.” He continued his tale of sorrows for several more lines, regaling the reporter with a litany of jealous notions and suspicious of infidelity. To him, whatever had happened in the previous morning, was justified. Meanwhile, down the street in their home, Mollie rested from her serious injuries, with one of the balls in her ear still lodged firmly in place. Sadly, the article summarizing the second day of the event ended on a somber note indicative of the time period:
“Mrs. Cliff, it is understood, does not want her husband punished for his crime, and is willing, like a woman, to blame herself entirely for the affair.”7
Alexandria Gazette, August 18, 1882
It was an ominous warning of things to come. If not prophetic.
Two months went by before there was a conclusion to the Cliff assault case. In the middle of October 1882, the Commonwealth set out to convict the prisoner James Cliff, who had the “intent to maim, disfigure, disable, and kill” his wife. Neither party had apparently seen each other since the incident in August, but circumstances that played out would prove that to be highly unlikely. After taking time for the selection of jury, witnesses were called, including Mollie McKinney herself. In a shocking turn of events, she refused to testify in court against her husband, giving no reply when asked about the events on the 17th of August. When she did finally speak up later on during questioning, she merely said that “she had nothing to tell” and objected to other leading questions that would have assuredly convicted Mr. Cliff. All the prosecutor could get from the witness after several attempts to get her to tell the truth was a smile. The smiling grew infectious, and soon laughter was heard in the courtroom. When asked if she had been talked to or influenced before the trial, she responded with a submissive and inaudible “yes.” She then refused to say anything else on the matter of the trial, which forced the prosecutor to send his star witness to jail for contempt of court for the evening. The trial reconvened on the follow day, October 16, 1882, with the witness in a hopefully better position for testimony. She agreed to “tell part, but not all” of her story. Whatever she said must not have been compelling as the end of the trial neared. Other witnesses were examined, playing into the hands of the defense, who asked for a plea of transitory insanity before the jury retired.8
Sometimes, things do not go like you think they will, especially during the Victorian Era. (Alexandria Gazette, October 16, 1882)
A verdict was reached later that evening after a short deliberation. Foreman Joseph Kauffman presented a verdict of not guilty. James Cliff, now a free man, left the court room with his wife “arm in arm, as loving as if nothing has ever happened to disturb their domestic relations.” Applause could be heard audibly in the court room after the verdict was delivered. It was said that the insanity plea put up by the defense “was worked with a success in this case that even the family of the prisoner did not anticipate.” Who would? Such was the time and delicate circumstances that let a jealous man with anger issues get away with some of the worst instances of domestic abuse. It was the unfortunately product of the time period. The vehicle for that violence was eerily enough the Wilkes Street tunnel, which provided Mr. Cliff with the perfect location to strike her in a jealous rage. The Gazette later reported that Mr. Cliff met his end later on in the Wilkes Tunnel, but that could not be confirmed at present.
If you or someone you know are being abused domestically, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-79907233. If you cannot speak safely, log onto thehotline.org or text LOVEIS to 22522.
(This is the first of a three-part series on Alexandria’s historic Wilkes Street Tunnel.)
Matthew Eng, Offbeat NOVA
There is an ordinary looking tunnel one-half mile away from the heart of Old Town Alexandria’s bustling King Street waterfront. The tunnel, approximately one hundred and seventy feet long, extends between South Royal and Lee Streets, passing under Fairfax Street. Long ago, the citizens that lived in its proximity referred to the area as “tunnel town” after the aforementioned structure. Nowadays, it’s better known by the name of the street it passes through: the Wilkes Street tunnel. The street and its tunnel are named after John Wilkes, a radical English statesman who championed the cause of the American colonies against King George III.
The tunnel’s connection to the city and Northern Virginia is not unlike the structure itself, with beaming rays of light peaking at either end amidst long periods of murky gloom and blackness. After awakening some of its past ghosts, maybe this in depth look at the troubled history of the Wilkes Street tunnel will coax others out of the darkness and into the light.
PART I: Tunnel Town
To tell the story of the Wilkes Street tunnel, you have to start at the creation of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, the first set of tracks to pass through the tunnel’s arched walls. The Orange and Alexandria Railroad Company chartered the railroad in 1848. This first incarnation ran from the Potomac River docks at the far end of Union Street in Alexandria to Gordonsville in Orange County. At its peak just before the American Civil War, the railroad extended to an expanse in the Commonwealth nearly one hundred and fifty miles from Alexandria to Lynchburg.1
Bridge on Orange & Alexandria Railroad (Library of Congress Image #LC-DIG-ppmsca-33468)
T.C. Atkinson, Chief Engineer of the railroad, put a notice in the local newspaper in February 1850 for Alexandria’s portion of railroad construction, including a tunnel “about 360 feet in length with support walls, bridge, and culvert masonry.” According to former Alexandria City Archaeologist Pamela Cressey, the local firm of Malone and Crockett won the contract and soon began work in earnest.2 George H. Smoot, then President of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, stuck a shovel in Wilkes Street between Fairfax and Lee (then-called Water Street), which became the first work done for the tunnel. By April of the following year, the American Telegraph reported that the tunnel was proceeding “with vigor” and would soon be completed. By that time, the company had already laid the rails for the Orange and Alexandria railroad on Union street.3
On May 6, 1851, the first locomotive was placed on the track for the Orange and Alexandria Rail, traveling “from the north end of Union Street to the tunnel on Wilkes Street.”4 The news snippet reported that “the performance was good, and gave general satisfaction.” The dutiful work of Malone and Crockett, however, decreased in quality after the initial victories of the tunnel design. It deteriorated so much that they were eventually taken off the project, according to chief engineer Atkinson. It was not until October 1855 that the Gazette reported that the railroad company, now in charge of construction, planned to complete the eastern end of the tunnel overlooking the Potomac River. By early July 1854, locals hoped for a speedy conclusion to the tunnel’s initial construction, as “it should not be suffered to remain in its present condition any longer.”5
The tunnel was officially completed in 1856, over budget and over schedule. The tunnel’s original intended purpose was as a route service and major connector to the railroad carrying supplies and goods from wharfs and warehouses on the Alexandria waterfront to all points south. A nearby large depot and roundabout house was located up the track in the present-day Carlyle/Eisenhower business district. The tunnel’s sandstone vaulted walls stretched to nearly sixteen feet in height at the top of its brick arch. The western end of the tunnel featured a long ramp with brick wall sides. Architecturally, it is known as a “cut and cover” bridge, a common technique later popularized by the highly unpopular Washington Metro Area Transition Authority in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
Order for the Superintendent of Police to enforce improvements on the Wilkes Street Tunnel (Alexandria Gazette, August 14, 1857)
Problems with the tunnel’s “completed” construction began almost immediately. In 1857, the Alexandria Committee on Streets reported in the Gazette about the poor condition of the tunnel, particularly the drainage and its already decaying eastern end that faced the Potomac River and Union Street.6 The tunnel’s condition became a pressing issue that continued well into the summer of 1857, coming to a head in August. The shoddy craftsmanship came up once more in a Board of Alderman meeting proceedings in the August 14, 1857, issue of the Gazette. The Superintendent of Police had given notice to the Orange and Alexandria Railroad Company to “put the work near the eastern part of the tunnel on Wilkes and Water Streets, in good order.” The work to be done included the replacement of decaying wooden flooring with new timber and better protection on the tunnel’s front. The same order was later published in the newspaper in November and April of the following year, so it is unclear when the work was actually finished, if at all.
Alexandria’s location to the proximity of Washington, D.C., made it an important political stop for many candidates seeking victory in the hotly contested election of 1860. Locals came out to support then-Presidential candidate and Alexandria native John Bell and the Constitutional Union Party in a torch-light procession and meeting on September 28, 1860, less than two months before election day. With a large sign emblazoned with an eagle declaring, “The Constitution, the Union, and the Maintenance of the Laws,” a train carrying Bell traveled through the Wilkes Tunnel on its way to the White House amongst a throng of “Tunneltown boys” carrying big bells and cheering huzzahs and other garish exultations. This is the first instance that you see a newspaper refer to the area around the Wilkes passageway as “tunnel town.” The article ended with a conclusive “assurance” that Alexandria would “speak for the Union in November next, in thunderous tones.” It was hardly thunderous. Bell was embarrassed in the election, and Alexandria voted to secede in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War.7
During the war, Alexandria was a city with Confederate sympathies that quickly fell back into the watchful eye of the Union across the river on May 24, 1861, remaining in Federal hands until the end of the conflict. During that time, the Union Army made the city a major center for troops and supplied being sent to the front lines. Wounded soldiers were brought back to local hospitals in the area, like the Lyceum and, perhaps most famous, Mansion House Hotel depicted in the short-lived PBS series Mercy Street. The Orange and Alexandria Railroad, like so many others at this time, were also taken under control by the Union Army for the war effort, which included the use of the Wilkes Tunnel.
It was not until this brief period of Federal occupation that we begin to see the dark history connected to the tunnel. The Alexandria Gazette, a paper that decidedly leaned its journalistic integrity towards the Confederacy, included several stories of odd occurrences and malfeasance by Union soldiers in the dark tunnel. After the first major battle in Manassas (Bull Run), the newspaper reported that a woman threw rocks collected in her apron at “panic-stricken” Union Zouave soldiers as they escaped through the tunnel onto awaiting gunboats along the Alexandria waterfront. It was the first “baptism of fire” for these men, but hardly the last casualty in Alexandria during the war.8
Under the heading of a “SERIOUS ACCIDENT,” the Gazette reported on the first major incident involving the tunnel in occupied Alexandria on August 26, 1862. According to the brief writeup, a soldier’s right leg was cut clean off above the ankle after lying on the railroad track at the eastern entrance to the Wilkes Tunnel the previous night. He was undoubtedly under the “influence of liquor” and, in an attempt to cross the track, fell with his leg across the rail as a locomotive passed over it, too drunk to move out of the way in time. He was later taken to a hospital and treated for his injuries. It was never reported on the condition of the soldier afterwards. It’s clear from this incident and other snippets from the paper that the Federal occupying force were adept at finding new ways of causing trouble as time dragged on and idleness set in. The newspaper also reported on the necessity to clear out Union stragglers around the city “who had thronged the streets” outside of their encampments.
Some time later in 1864, it was also reported that some “fiends” who murdered an individual put his dead body on the tracks near the western end of the tunnel. The corpse’s head was crushed as an oncoming train on the rail passed over it. It was never specified if the individuals responsible were Union soldiers or local citizens.9
Pvt. Scotten walked into this entrance and never walked out. (Matthew Eng Photo)
The most heinous and unsettling event of the war period occurred two years later in March 1864. On Friday, March 11, 1864, James Scotten of Company G, 4th Regiment, Delaware Volunteers, walked into the Wilkes Tunnel at around six o’clock in the evening and never walked out. According to the report, Scotten was approached by an individual and stabbed in the back of the neck five times. One cut severed his jugular and made a “considerable incision” in his windpipe. One cut from the autopsy report showed the instrument entering the spinal column, which ultimately killed him. Despite his windpipe being cut, one civilian near the tunnel was able to hear Scotten’s pain-stricken groans. By the time he arrived, he was dead.
Scotten was seen walking into the tunnel with another individual who became the prime suspect, John Rush of the 72d Regiment, New York Volunteers. Scotten had just received four months’ pay on the day he was murdered, with very little money found on his person at the time of his death. Rush was arrested on suspicion of murder where he awaited examination. “The victim wore new clothes and there was every reason to suppose he had enlisted in order to procure several hundred dollars bounty,” the report noted. According to Army records, Rush later mustered out of the war several months later on June 8, 1864, in New York City with the rest of his battle-hardened unit. It is safe to say he was never convicted of any wrongdoing. A perpetrator of the crime was never found, and Scotten is listed as “murdered” on Delaware Civil War veteran logs and online registers today.10
Private John Rush was mustered out of the military in June 1864, indicating he was never convicted of a crime. (Matthew Eng Image)
Life continued on for the city after these two incidents in 1862 and 1864, respectively. Complaints included in the local newspaper also continued for the sake of safety after a child fell through a set of broken blanks in the tunnel and was considerably hurt. By the time the war ended, the Gazette was back to reporting on the “ruinous condition” of the tunnel that was becoming more dangerous with each passing day.11
Footnotes
Pamela Cressey, “Wilkes Street Tunnel is Important Piece of Past,” Alexandria Gazette Packet, October 19, 1995. Accessed July 11, 2020, Link.
Ibid.
The American Telegraph, April 14, 1851.
Alexandria Gazette, May 7, 1851.
Alexandria Gazette, July 1, 1854.
Alexandria Gazette, June 1, 1857.
Alexandria Gazette, September 28, 1860.
Alexandria Gazette, March 31, 1922.
Alexandria Gazette, March 10, 1909.
Alexandria Gazette, March 12, 1864.
Alexandria Gazette, September 24, 1864; Alexandria Gazette, January 10, 1865.
Offbeat NOVA 