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Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm
Welcome to Oxon Cove Park. Around here a walk in the park is a walk back in time. Exhibits along the way will help you find the layers of time. The Mount Welby historic house also has exhibits.
Today Oxon Hill Farm is the main feature of Oxon Cove Park. You can experience some of daily life on a working farm from the early 1900s, complete with pigs, chicken, horses, a garden, barns, farm machinery, and much more.
Oxon Cove Park is also a great spot for watching wildlife, walking a nature trail, and fishing. Open grassland, forests, marshes and swamps are all part of the park.
Pre-1600s: The Piscataway Indian people were farming land along the Potomac River in this area when the first Europeans arrived.
Late 1600s-Early 1800s: John Addison and his descendants, wealthy planters and colonial leaders, owned this land. Part of the estate was known as Oxon Hill Manor. The Addisons grew tobacco oats and corn with the labor of many enslaved people.
Early 1800s-1843: In the early 1800s, Dr. Samuel DeButts, a native of Ireland bought some 250 acres of the former Oxon Hill Manor. DeButts renamed the property Mount Welby in honor of his wife's family.
1843-1891: The property stayed in the family until 1843. Over the next four decades the land belonged to a series of owners.
1891-1959: In 1891 the federal government bought 350 acres of land that include the former estate of Samuel DeButts. The property became a farm that provided food to thousands of patients at nearby St. Elizabeths Hospital.
1959-present: Farming for St. Elizabeths Hospital ended here in the late 1950s. In 1967, the land was transferred to the National Park Service for educational purposes.
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