The Lost Town of Colchester, Virginia

The Rise, Decline, and Remarkable Preservation of a Colonial Port Town

Time Warp in Northern Virginia

Time-warps are a recurring theme in literature and media. Particular favorites include the novels A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, the films Groundhog Day and The Final Countdown, and the 1990s TV series Quantum Leap. A recent day trip was a personal time-warp experience which included a decidedly substantive wormhole.

Potomac Path, the King’s Highway, and the Occoquan Ferry

Even before European colonization, a Native American hunting trail dubbed the Potomac Path existed alongside its namesake river. This trail subsequently became the Virginia portion of the Kings Highway – an early 18th century north-south stage route connecting Boston to Charleston, South Carolina.

From long time Fairfax County historian Edith Moore Sprouse: “Land speculators from the lower Tidewater first acquired tracts on the Occoquan [River] in the 1650’s. Usually the Indian trail along the Potomac… was easily traversed, and most of the creeks could be easily forded.... The Occoquan, however, was no gentle stream. In winter its waters were treacherous and nasty, pouring through a narrow rocky gorge, tossed by biting winds. Swollen in the spring by melting snows from the Bull Run Mountains to the west, this river could form an impassable barrier for days at a time.”¹

A ferry operated across the Occoquan as early as 1690. Col. George Mason, his son George Mason IV of Gunston Hall, and George IV’s youngest son Thomas Mason administered the ferry concession for more than 100 years from family land on the south bank of the river.

Colchester, Virginia

Three hundred fifty acres on the north bank of the Occoquan were purchased in 1753 by Peter Wagener, clerk of the Fairfax County court, who petitioned the Virginia Assembly to charter a town on the portion of that land which included the ferry crossing and the terminus of Ox Road, a mining road cut through the forest from the Bull Run mountains by land baron Robert “King” Carter in the 1720s. Historian Mrs. Sprouse writes, “The legislation did not specify a name for the town. This must have been chosen by Peter Wagener, whose home in England had been near the town of Colchester in Essex.”

Peter Wagener was one of five appointed town trustees, all vestrymen of Truro Parish.² The sales of the first lots in 1756 were not encouraging. Apart from Wagener, no trustee invested in the venture, nor even ferry administrator Mason of Gunston Hall. Among those who did invest were 20 year-old Scotsman Alexander Henderson, who partnered with John Glassford and Co. of Glasgow in establishing a high-quality mercantile store in the new town. Successful Dumfries merchant Benjamin Grayson also purchased lots. When Grayson died in 1757, his oldest son Benjamin Jr., only slightly older than young Henderson, took over his father’s Colchester interests.⁴

The town consisted of four 60-foot wide streets and 42 lots of 1/2 acre (or less). The town grew slowly, a market square developed, tobacco warehouses were built along the wharves, and a number of taverns (“ordinaries”) served travelers on the stage road. One entrepreneur planted a vineyard, the central street expectantly becoming known as Wine Street.

Decline of Colchester

As the Revolutionary War approached, British ships blockaded the Potomac, and trade – never on par with nearby ports like Alexandria and Dumfries – diminished further. George Washington (a fellow Truro vestryman) dined in and passed through Colchester numerous times, notably in 1781 on his way to Yorktown. In April 1791, then-President Washington was aboard the ferry in his carriage when one of the poorly secured horses tumbled into the river, taking the rest of the team and the president with him. The horses were able to swim to the shore, thereby averting a national tragedy. By that same 1791, however, a rival ferry had been operating two miles upriver at the Occoquan Mills below the falls, and in 1795 a bridge had been built in its place. Thomas Mason answered by building a bridge of his own at Colchester, a wooden structure described in 1798 by Englishman John Davis as one “whose semi-eliptical arches are scarcely inferior to those of princely London.”¹ Thomas Mason’s plantation “Woodbridge” and the subsequent Prince William County town that grew from it took their names from this short-lived span which, when washed away in an 1807 storm, was never rebuilt. The diversion of stage and commercial traffic northward – including a re-routing of Ox Road – combined with the War of 1812, the building of canals, the rise of steamships, sedimentation of the Occoquan, and a putative 1815 fire all contributed to Colchester’s eventual failure. By 1817, only seven buildings remained.

The Wormhole

In 1872 a railroad trestle bridge was built over the Occoquan a few hundred yards upriver from Old Colchester, and in 1915 a more attractive arched iron replacement structure was completed at the edge of the historic town. It still stands, and echoes the arches of Thomas Mason’s short-lived 18th century wood bridge. The 1872 span was reconfigured and is still used for U.S. Route 1 vehicular traffic.

The railroad today acts as a barrier to the site of Old Colchester and its larger peninsula of Mason Neck, which has resisted typical 20th century suburban development – thousands of acres having been preserved and set aside by various non-profits and government agencies as historical sites (like George Mason’s Gunston Hall), public parks, and wildlife refuges.

The sole southern access to Mason Neck is old Ox Road – now a curiously narrow Furnace Road – which narrows still further into a one-lane underpass beneath the rails. “Sound Horn,” a sign cautions. After successfully navigating the wormhole the former port town appears on the right. Eight primarily 1950s-era residences line an even more narrow Old Colchester Road, formerly King’s Highway/Essex Street, no longer 60-feet wide, but a mere 15-18 feet.

One 18th century structure notably still stands, the former Fairfax Arms tavern. If its walls could talk… A marina that has been in the Beach family since the 1880s occupies half of the original footprint and most of the waterfront of the defunct port town, its narrow driveway believed to run atop erstwhile Wine Street. The ferry landing is still there at the base of the gently sloping road, conceivably waiting for a Mason descendant to restart the concession.

On the opposite shore in Prince William County is the Belmont Bay development. 1980s-era townhouses now stand on the ridge across from Old Colchester; its streets – like Ferry Landing Lane, Potomac Path Drive, and Colchester Ferry Place – were named to honor the history of the land. The shoreline itself is currently undeveloped.

Preservation

Colchester’s life span was a mere 60 years. It was rapidly abandoned and isolated, and has seen little development since. Fairfax County has been performing site surveys, securing easements, carrying out archeological digs, and more for the past few decades. Not only can you imagine a future open-air Old Colchester living history site, but you can experience a fair vision of its promise today. All you have to do is navigate that one-lane wormhole.

¹ Sprouse, Edith Moore, Colchester: Colonial Port on the Potomac (1975, Fairfax County Historical Commission)

² Slaughter, Phillip, The History of Truro Parish in Virginia (1907 G.W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia, PA)

³ Benjamin Sr.’s second son Spence married Peter Wagener’s oldest child Mary Elizabeth around this time. All four are our ancestors.

⁴ The careers of Alexander Henderson and Benjamin Grayson Jr. contrast starkly. Alexander later oversaw establishments in numerous ports, and is referred to as “the father of the American chain store.” Benjamin became overextended financially, was insolvent in a matter of a few years, and had died by 1768.