Founding of Takoma Park Monument

Chevy Chase, MD

In 1774, on the eve of the Revolution, Thomas Johns—soon to serve as a colonel in the Continental cause—joined Georgetown merchant Thomas Richardson to raise flour mills along the reliable current of Rock Creek. Grinding grain into flour for the growing capital region, mills operated on this site for roughly a century, outlasting the men who built them and falling silent only in the 1870s. In an age before steam, a dependable creek was industrial infrastructure, and Rock Creek's waters turned the stones that fed Georgetown's wharves and tables.

Washington, DC

Set just south of the White House on the Ellipse, the Zero Milestone was conceived as the point from which all distances on American highways would be measured, echoing the ancient Roman "Golden Milestone" in the Forum. Authorized by Congress in 1920 and dedicated in 1923, it rose during the early automobile age when good-roads advocates dreamed of a national network radiating from the capital. The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey precisely fixed its latitude, longitude, and elevation, anchoring the small granite marker as a symbolic center of the country's road system.

Arlington, VA

In 1797, the merchants of Georgetown spanned the Potomac at the Little Falls, raising the first bridge across the river in a bid to capture trade that might otherwise flow downstream to the rival Virginia port of Alexandria. The original Falls Bridge let wagons hauling goods from Virginia's "upper country" roll directly into Georgetown, knitting the young capital region's commerce together. Repeatedly destroyed by floods and rebuilt over the decades, the crossing eventually took the name "Chain Bridge" from a chain-suspension version that once stood here.

Arlington, VA

Where Pimmit Run empties into the Potomac at the river's head of navigation, colonial Virginia planter Thomas Lee patented land in 1719 and, in 1742, established an official tobacco inspection warehouse. In the tobacco economy of the Tidewater, such government-licensed warehouses were vital chokepoints where the colony's signature crop was graded, certified, and prepared for shipment to Britain. This riverside spot grew into what's remembered as Arlington's first industrial complex, later associated with figures like Philip Richard Fendall in the years after 1794.