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Published: January 3rd 2012
Rows of gravestones at Arlington
Rows of headstones of soldiers killed in combat, the most iconic image of the cemeteryArlington National Cemetery
Today is my first day in
Washington DC.
The capitol of the US, it’s an area I have visited many times over the years.
For this trip, I decided to focus on things I have not seen in a long time.
The first of these was
Arlington National Cemetery.
For a military cemetery, it receives a large number of visitors.
Arlington is America’s
Valhalla, a place to pay respect to heroes.
The cemetery came into existence partly due to convenience.
The land was originally the estate of
George Parke Custis, the half-grandson of George Washington.
His daughter married a then cornel in the US Army,
Robert E Lee.
When the Civil War started, he was offered command of the Union army.
He thought about this for a long time before deciding that he could not fight against his fellow Virginians, and took over the Confederate army instead.
The estate has a commanding view of Washington, so after Lee left the US army seized it as a strategic asset.
The Union army needed a place close to Washington to bury battlefield dead, and they already held Lee’s
Arlington House
The fomer home of Robert E Lee. Siezed by the US Army in 1861, and turned into a cemetery in 1864 Arlington House, so they buried bodies on the estate.
The fact that this action desecrated the land of a man most now considered a traitor was certainly a nice bonus.
The cemetery is guarded by a set of huge marble gates.
Most visitors never reach them, and get sent to the tourist lot on the side.
An entire section is reserved for tour buses.
Next to this is the visitor’s center.
It contains a small museum, large pictures of particularly memorable burials (John F Kennedy, the Unknown Soldier for World War II, etc.)
They also hand out a very useful map of the cemetery with graves listed by section.
Lee’s original home,
Arlington House, is still located at the top of the main hill.
At this point, it occupies the one part in the entire grounds with no graves.
The house is large and made of stone rather than the expected colonial.
The view of Washington DC from the front porch is still sweeping, one of the best in the area.
The interior is currently being restored so the rooms are
View from Arlington House
A small portion of the view from Arlington House, one of the best viewpoints in Washington DC empty.
The Park Service tries to make up for this with large pictures of what the rooms look like when furnished.
The attempt is only partially successful.
The first burials were next to the rose garden.
The graves have dates of 1862, although the first burials happened two years later.
A particularly ironic grave lies in front of Arlington House.
Pierre L’Enfant was a French Army officer and surveyor who laid out the street plan for Washington DC.
The new government officially rejected his proposal, even though they ultimately implemented it.
L’Enfant was mostly ignored for the rest of his lifetime.
Only after his death was he given proper acknowledgement as the father of Washington DC, and his grave moved to overlook the city he designed.
Kennedy Gravesites
The most visited section of the entire cemetery lies directly below Arlington House, the graves of the Kennedy brothers.
John Kennedy, as everyone knows, was a Navy commander, very popular president, and assassinated in office.
Robert Kennedy was a former Attorney General, US Senator, and presidential candidate who was also assassinated.
Edward Kennedy was a US Senator for 47
John Kennedy's gravesite
Eternal flame over the gravesite of John F Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States years until he died of a brain tumor.
As time passes, they have passed from history to myth.
The memory draws tourists like a magnet.
John is first.
A large amphitheater contains a wall with excerpts from his most popular speeches, including his iconic
inaugural address.
A set of marble steps leads to a platform where an eternal flame burns.
John Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and two children who died in infancy are buried in front of the flame.
Next door is Robert.
He asked in his will to have his grave marked with just a simple wooden cross.
The wish was fulfilled, sort of.
There is indeed a wooden cross over his grave, one of only two in the entire cemetery.
In front of this, however, is another amphitheater with a reflecting pool and more speech excerpts.
Next to Robert is Edward.
His grave is marked by another wooden cross, a plaque, and nothing else.
The site of the graves has a poignant irony.
A mere two weeks before his assassination, John Kennedy attended an Armistice Day
Robert Kennedy reflecting pool
Robert Kennedy asked for a simple cross over his grave. Next to that cross lies this memorial (now called Veterans’ Day) celebration at Arlington.
Afterwards, he stood on the walkway in front of Arlington House, admiring the view of Washington DC.
He quipped “This is so lovely I would like to spend eternity here”.
His grave is now located directly below the viewpoint.
A number of notable grave sites are located close to the Kennedys.
One section holds a notable number of Supreme Court justices.
This section contains, among others,
William Brennan, who wrote the most important opinions applying the
Bill of Rights to the states in the 1960s, and
Thurgood Marshall, who argued the most important desegregation cases of the era as an NAACP lawyer before joining the court himself.
Proving that death has no politics, this section also contains
William Renquist, who as chief justice in the early 1990s tried to narrow many of those same decisions.
The last grave I found before leaving was the other president buried at Arlington.
William Howard Taft was president in the early 1910s, during the period the US was desperately trying to stay out of World War I.
People view him as an ineffective president even though he initiated
several reforms (including the modern income tax which ended the
Gilded Age).
He got a rare second act when he was appointed Chief Justice by Warren Harding.
He is still the only man to hold both offices.
His grave is located away from the main paths, so it is often overlooked.
Great Falls of the Potomac
After Arlington, I went to see one of the area’s natural wonders, the
Great Falls of the Potomac.
Getting there required dealing with the Washington area’s
notorious traffic.
Unbelievably, the parkway away from the cemetery moved fairly well.
I pulled off the parkway before the Beltway because the Beltway turns all its feeder roads into parking lots.
The local road also moved fairly well until it also reached the Beltway.
Sure enough, it then halted.
What surprised me is that even after the intersection, it remained crowded and slow.
Many millions of years ago, the Appalachian Mountains were higher than the Rockies.
Erosion then set in.
The rivers dumped their load of soil on the coast, forming a coastal plain.
A general uplift then raised the plain above the
William Howard Taft's gravesite
The first president to be buried at Arlington, and very overshadowed by JFK these days. water, forming the current Eastern seaboard.
The boundary between the Appalachian rocks and Coastal dirt is called the
Fall Line.
It runs from Maine to North Carolina, and it is marked by rapids and small falls on every river that crosses it.
The fall line is particularly noticeable in Virginia.
Great Falls is where the Potomac crosses the fall line.
Great Falls is a bit of misnomer.
It’s actually a long and wide series of cascades and rapids.
Most of the year, the river breaks into dozens of channels, falls over small rocks, recombines and splits again, falls over more rocks, and so forth though the Falls.
The power of the water is undeniable, but it’s not exactly impressive to look at.
This changes completely in the spring.
At this time of year, snowmelt raises the water level by three feet or more.
All of the little rocks are now covered, and the Falls becomes a sheet of froth spraying and dropping over a wide ledge.
The roar is so loud it can be heard from the parking lot.
This is what a big
Great Falls of the Potomac
The Great Falls in spring snowmelt. From left to right, the channels are called the Spout, the Fingers, and the Horseshoe river waterfall is supposed to look like.
The one downside is that the water fills the ravine below the Falls, which reduces the apparent height.
The overlook has pictures of the Falls at different water levels, so it’s possible to compare them to the view at hand.
Great Falls is also a
historic site.
Settlers realized very early on the difficulty the falls presented for navigation, and devised schemes to deal with it.
One of the more successful was the
Patowmack Canal Company, which was organized by George Washington.
They built a usable canal on the Virginia side of the falls.
Remnants of the canal are visible next to the park.
(LATE UPDATE)
In summer, when the water level drops, Great Falls becomes one of the toughest whitewater challenges in the United States.
Here is what that looks like:
After Great Falls I needed some dinner.
That meant a mall.
This part of Virginia consists entirely of housing developments and office parks, and the better restaurants are located in malls.
I ended up in the
Tyson’s Corner Center, which is the largest mall
Patowmack Canal near Great Falls
The remains of the Patowmack Canal, built by a company organized by George Washington to bypass Great Falls in the area.
It was once written up in an issue of National Geographic on sprawl.
The Washing ton DC area is very international, so this mall had every type of restaurant imaginable.
I ended up eating Mexican.
This mall also had free wifi service, which was useful for finding a place to stay for the night.
I chose the
Budget Host Travelers Motel based on its good reviews, low rates for the area, and proximity to a Metro stop.
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