George Washington Memorial Parkway

History

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, visiting George Washington's Mount Vernon estate was seen as a patriotic duty, with most people taking a steamboat excursion from Washington, D.C. By the 1920s, 200,000 people a year visited Mount Vernon. In the 1880s, Alexandria officials formed the Mount Vernon Avenue Association in September 1887 to promote a national road to Mount Vernon. Congress appropriated $10,000 for a survey in 1889, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers agreed that a superior road was necessary, but construction of the Washington, Alexandria, and Mount Vernon Railway between 1892 and 1896 dealt a blow to the plan.

During the Alexandria Sesquicentennial in 1899, civic boosters called for a bridge to Alexandria, reigniting interest in a roadway. The idea became a call for a monumental avenue lined with Beaux-Arts memorials, gaining support from the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1902, the McMillan Plan endorsed a road along the Virginia shoreline, seeing it as an extension of the D.C. park system and a means of protecting the Great Falls of the Potomac River and the Potomac Palisades, though it focused on tree-lined boulevards and quiet carriage paths.

Route description

The parkway begins at a traffic circle at Mount Vernon, where it joins and leaves SR 235, following much of the former Washington, Alexandria and Mount Vernon Railway right-of-way. The southern section is an expressway with at-grade intersections, extending from Mount Vernon past Fort Hunt to South Washington Street at the southern end of Alexandria. The Mount Vernon Trail parallels the southern and middle sections from Mount Vernon to Theodore Roosevelt Island.

Points of interest include Mount Vernon Plantation, Huntley Meadows Park, Fort Hunt Park, Dyke Marsh, Hunting Creek, Jones Point, and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Washington Street in Alexandria is maintained by the city under a 1929 memorandum of agreement that granted the federal government a permanent easement and required roundabouts at both ends of the street. Commercial vehicles are prohibited, though taxicabs and airport shuttles are allowed.

Recent construction

From 2022 to 2025, the National Park Service rehabilitated the northern section from the Spout Run Parkway to I-495, repairing guardrails, bridges, pavement, and drainage. The I-495 Express Lanes Northern Extension Project extended express lanes north from VA-267 to the American Legion Bridge, redesigning the interchange with the George Washington Memorial Parkway to add express lanes access within the center of the trumpet.