Lady Bird Johnson Park

History

Columbia Island is partly natural and partly man-made. It did not exist in 1818; at that time Analostan Island was largely rock and close to the Washington D.C. shoreline. Deforestation and increased agricultural use upstream caused erosion and silt deposits, and by 1884 the new southern part of Analostan Island supported a well-established wetland. The river later eroded the center of Analostan, severing Columbia Island.

Between 1911 and 1922, the Potomac was dredged to deepen the channel and widen the distance between the islands; dredged material was piled on Columbia Island, building it higher and giving it its current shape. Filling was complete in spring 1924. The island received its name around 1918 from an unnamed District of Columbia engineer; the first use in The Washington Post was April 1922, the same year it was transferred to the National Park Service.

In 1922, Congress authorized the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission to hold a design competition; the firm McKim, Mead and White was awarded the commission, with William Mitchell Kendall as lead designer. Congress authorized construction of the bridge on February 24, 1925, along with approaches, improvement of B Street NW, and construction of Memorial Drive and the Hemicycle.

Description

Lady Bird Johnson Park sits on an island in the Potomac River, with the Boundary Channel separating it from Virginia and the main river surrounding the other sides. The island held 121 acres of landscaped parkland as of 2007.

Visitors can reach the park from downtown D.C. via the Arlington Memorial Bridge, from Arlington National Cemetery via Memorial Drive, or from Northern Virginia via the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The Mount Vernon Trail runs along the island’s side facing the District, connecting to Theodore Roosevelt Island and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Near the southern tip’s marina, the western side offers a view of the Pentagon.

In popular culture

Lady Bird Johnson Park appears in fiction novels, sometimes under the name Columbia Island. It is mentioned in Anthony S. Policastro's Dark End of the Spectrum, S.R. Larson's America Occupied, Allan Leverone's Final Vector, and Mary Eason's Killer Moves. Sean Flannery's Moving Targets references the Columbia Island Marina and Boundary Channel, as does Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain. Sheri Holman's The Mammoth Cheese mentions the marina and Pentagon Lagoon, and the marina appears in Mike Lawson's The Second Perimeter and in Phil Little and Brad Whittington's Hell in a Briefcase.