Theodore Roosevelt Island

History

The island's first recorded name, 'Anacostine', came from the Nacotchtank Indians, who temporarily moved there in 1668. The island was patented in 1682 as Analostan or Barbadoes Island by Captain Randolph Brandt (or Brunett), who left it to his daughter Margaret Hammersley upon his death in 1698 or 1699. Historical records indicate the Nacotchtank were living on the island in 1711, but by 1751 they went unmentioned and appeared to be a 'lost tribe', likely having merged with nearby tribes such as the Piscataway.

George Mason III acquired the island in 1724. George Mason IV (then underage) inherited it in 1735 upon his father's death. A ferry from the Virginia shore to Georgetown was moved to Mason's island in 1748. John Mason, son and executor of George Mason IV, inherited the island as the century ended, pursuant to a 1773 will presented to the Fairfax County Circuit court in 1792 by his brother George Mason V, who died in 1796.

John Mason built a mansion around 1796, using free black and slave labor, and planted crops and gardens. He entertained lavishly, including a 1798 party to honor then-uncrowned Louis Philippe I, and an 1811 fete for his son John Murray Mason. In 1809 he secured a charter for a turnpike to connect his ferry landing with the Washington-Alexandria turnpike. He operated a ferry between Georgetown and the Virginia shore until the Aqueduct Bridge was built in 1843, and from 1817 until 1838 served as the last president of the Potowmack Company.

In 1842, John Mason sold the island to John Carter. After Carter died in 1851, the island passed to William A. Bradley. During the Civil War, Union forces occupied the island, and Mason's Island became a U.S. Army training camp called Camp Greene. The 1st United States Colored Infantry used the island to train its soldiers.

From 1864 to 1865, the camp housed as many as 1,200 formerly enslaved people. Following the declaration of war against Spain in 1898, the island became a test site for experiments in electrical ignition of explosives led by chemist Charles Edward Munroe. From 1913 to 1931, Washington Gas Light Company owned the island. In 1931, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association purchased the island.

On Dec 12, 1932, President Hoover accepted the island as a shrine to Roosevelt and declared it would be known as Theodore Roosevelt Island. Congress authorized the memorial on May 21, 1932. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. developed a plan for the island. By 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps had cleared much of the island and pulled down the house's remaining walls; today, only part of the mansion's foundation remains. Funds were finally designated by Congress in 1960.

Geography and natural history

Theodore Roosevelt Island is an 88.5 acre island located in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. A small island, Little Island, lies just off the southern tip. Georgetown and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts are respectively across the main channel of the Potomac to the north and the east. The land is generally maintained as a natural park, with various trails and a memorial plaza featuring a statue of Roosevelt. According to the National Park Service, 'Today miles of trails through wooded uplands and swampy bottomlands honor the legacy of a great outdoorsman and conservationist.'

In popular culture

A story by Ernest Seton Thompson, 'The Royal Analostan,' mentions the island as the origin of a fictional cat breed. The 2014 film Captain America: The Winter Soldier depicted Little Island, off the southern tip, as the site of the Triskelion, headquarters of the fictional S.H.I.E.L.D. agency. In the 2019 video game Tom Clancy's The Division 2, the island was the site of a failed quarantine effort, with those quarantined radicalizing into a faction called the Outcasts.