Posted May 13, 2022, 2:36 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Washington, DC/rural SC
Posts: 2,028
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
Long winded "wElL AhChUallEY" Articles. Yawn. Georgetown was there and where the mall is now was marshy riverside areas.
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Detailed "long-winded" explanations can be handy for subjects that aren't simplistic 100% black or white issues (meaning most real world issues).
This is about as succinct as an accurate explanation that can be found on the subject:
In 1791, water surrounded the original city on three sides: the Anacostia to the southeast, the Potomac to the southwest, Rock Creek to the northwest. The city’s one dry boundary was set by the Sunderland Escarpment, a series of hills that formed a rim around the city. Boundary Street, now Florida Avenue, cut along the base of these uprisings. From above, the city would have looked like an amphitheater, its seats the series of terraced bluffs and wide valleys that overlooked the Potomac and Anacostia.
The rainwater that fell on these hills rolled through Washington on its way to the Chesapeake Bay. Creek after creek crisscrossed the city. The largest was Tiber or Goose Creek, which at its prime drained about half the District. Tiber Creek meandered westward along what is today Constitution Avenue before gradually widening and emptying into the Potomac at 17th Street. There were other streams, too: Slash Run. Brown’s Run. Piney Branch. Reed Branch. James Creek.
Water came up from below, too. Until about 1860, most of the city’s drinking water came from shallow wells and from the area’s ubiquitous springs. Gibson’s Spring. The City Spring. Willow Spring. Leech Spring. Back then, you didn’t need a whole lot of heavy machinery to bore into the city’s groundwater. You could practically use a straw.
Or you could use an ax and a shovel. In the 19th century, as the city began to develop in earnest, the wetlands grew along with it. Residents chopped down trees and loosened hillsides, reducing the land’s ability to hold water. Like a wet sponge being squeezed, the District’s surface became soggy. Flooding increased in the lowlands.
“Nature had provided man with a well-forested, well-drained area with undulating hills at the confluence of two large rivers,” wrote Arnebeck. “In short order men cut the trees and mucked up the natural drainage.”
The tidal marshlands that bordered the city also expanded throughout the 19th century because of farming and deforestation upstream on the Anacostia. “When you deforest a region above a watershed, the area below starts silting up,” says Arnebeck. “That’s Ecology 101. That’s what happened to the Potomac and the Anacostia. They silted up. And these huge tidal flats formed, for instance, in the area south of the White House.”
To Arnebeck, this proves that the District wasn’t really built on a swamp. Instead, he argues, a swamp was built on the District. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/arti...e-swamp-thing/
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