Before It Was Reagan National Airport, It Was Abingdon Plantation

STORY AND PHOTOS BY GLENDA BOOTH

Next to Reagan National Airport’s parking garage A, a triangular brick wall protrudes up from a quiet, grassy knoll into the sky. Amid the nonstop noise and hubbub of 860 acres of vehicles, road, runways, terminals, parking lots, garages, trains, takeoffs and landings is a tranquil, three-quarter-acre, park-like site. There stands a brick wall, the remains of an 18th and 19th-century planation called Abingdon..

In the 1600s, for bringing 120 colonists to Virginia, ship Captain Robert Hawson was granted a land patent on 8,000 acres in the area of today’s Gravelly Point and National Airport. He sold the property to John Alexander, whose grandson, Gerard Alexander, inherited the land and in 1746, built a house there that became the center of a plantation complex with terraces that sloped down to the Potomac River.

Over the years, the property had several owners, including Alexander Hunter, Jr., who after the Civil War recalled fond memories in his 1904 book Johnny Reb and Billy Yank: “We lived on a splendid estate of 650 acres, lying on the Potomac, between Alexandria and Washington. I doubt whether in the whole Southland there had existed a finer country seat; the house was built solidly, as if to defy time itself, with its beautiful trees, fine orchards, its terraced lawns, graveled walks leading to the river a quarter of a mile away; the splendid barns, the stables with fine horses (for which my father, a retired naval officer, had a special fondness), the servants quarters, where dwelt the old family retainers and their offspring, some fifty or more.”

A Thriving Plantation

After the Alexanders, for whom Alexandria was named, Abingdon had several owners, including Martha Custis Washington’s son by her first marriage, John Parke (“Jacky”) and his wife, Eleanor Calvert Custis, who wanted to be close to Mount Vernon. Eleanor Custis gave birth to Eleanor, known as “Nelly,” and George Washington (“Little Wash”) Parke Custis. John served in the Revolutionary War as an aide de camp to General George

Washington, but he contracted “camp fever” and died at Yorktown. Martha and the General adopted Nelly and Little Wash.

The plantation’s name likely comes from Abingdon, England, the ancestral home of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington.

Today’s visitors can see the triangular brick wall, part of an original structure, probably a kitchen or dependency that had a two-sided hearth shaped like a sideways capital letter “I” with a serif font.

Also remaining is the foundation of the Alexanders’ Georgian-style house which was about 30 by 50 feet tall with two stories tall and a garret. The house had a central hallway with a parlor on each side. For them, it was not a grand mansion because as wealthy people, they had multiple houses and this was their “country estate.”

The plantation had two entry lanes, one from the river over the terraces' boat arrivals and a carriage road on the west side and a circular drive.

The estate’s history is interlaced with many early prominent Americans. George Washington probably visited. Owner Alexander Hunter in the mid1800s entertained at least three presidents: Andrew Jackson, John Tyler and James Polk.

Before the Colonists

Prior to English settlement, Indigenous people lived, hunted, fished and camped along the Potomac River for thousands of years. English colonists displaced the Piscataway people in the area of Abingdon.

Archaeologists have found numerous prehistoric objects, including pottery and projectile points. They found an ax-like tool called a “celt,” that had been carried into the kitchen. Historians believe that oysters shells, perhaps used to make lime for mortar, came from Indigenous peoples’ shell mounds. Most of Reagan National Airport sits on fill or created land and its other acres have been massively altered over time, which leaves Abingdon’s current three-quarters of an acre the only intact part surviving since colonial days. Given the massive human disturbance in the area, most prehistory evidence was destroyed long ago.

The Enslaved People

Abingdon could not have functioned without the 300 enslaved people who labored there in the fields, gardens, fishery and buildings. Their owners valued each person at $1.00 and listed them side by side with cattle, records show.

Archaeologists found 19th century Colono-ware, a low-fire type of earthenware made of local clay that reflects West African ceramic traditions. They also unearthed evidence of “house magic” or “hoodoo,” caches of small objects like quartz crystals thought to bring good luck and ward off bad spirits. These collections were probably buried under a hearth or door.

Some enslaved people likely slept in the house, perhaps on the floor. Slave quarters were on the south end of the plantation.

This summer, the airport will install new panels describing the lives of the enslaved people who lived and toiled there, alongside current interpretive panels.

Civil War Era and Beyond

During the Civil War, the federal government confiscated the plantation, then owned by the Hunters, and turned it into a military base for the Union Army. After the war, the Hunters, whose attorney was future U.S. president James Garfield, wanted it back, won their case in the Supreme Court and then sold it.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was the site of a brick manufacturing operation.

By 1924, the railroad had extended railyards onto the west side of the property. In the 1930s, the mansion mysteriously burned down. The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities stabilized the ruins, installed plaques and walkways and called it Abingdon Ruins. Some boxwoods from that era survived the fire.

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the federal government would build an airport on the mudflats at Gravelly Point, 4.5 miles south of Washington, D.C. At that time, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) was using the land to test highway materials. The brick buildings standing today on the airport’s south end were part of the DOT lab.

In World War II, the government built 200 military structures there, including a radar tower, for the Army Air Corps and the military airlift command. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) removed the last military building in the 1970s and moved operations to Andrews Air Force Base.

In the early 1990s, when airport managers wanted to build a parking garage on the Abingdon site, local preservationists mobilized. Among those who championed saving what was left of Abingdon were the Office of Historic Alexandria, the Arlington Historical Society and the Arlington Heritage Alliance. WMATA decided to preserve the ruins and make the site an interpretive park.

“The full sweep of history is there,” says Henry Ward, a consultant and the airport’s Historic Preservation Coordinator. “With Metro zipping by and an airplane landing every five minutes, the juxtaposition makes it so interesting. You can actually stand on the land of colonial buildings in the middle of an airport. Visitors can experience the airport’s layers of significance.”

How to Visit

Visitors can walk to the Abingdon site from Garage A or B. From the Metro station, take the exit for Terminal B, use the bridge to Garage B/C and walk through the garage on level 2 to the site. It is open during airport operating hours. There is no admission fee.

An exhibit hall in Terminal A,, which opened in 1941,, tells some of the story of the plantation and the airport’s early history with artifacts from a dig on Abingdon Plantation and displays about the airport’s early aviation history.