Existing comment:
Creating Parkland
After the Washington City Canal was converted to an underground sewer, a much larger water control project started that would transform this area forever.
Like the canal, the Potomac River was filling with sewage. The river was also becoming too shallow and unpredictable for ships to use.
It flooded with regularity. Finally, there was a desire to create more land for the expanding city.
The US Army Corps of Engineers, led by Civil War veteran Peter Conover Hains, dredged the river bottom and deposited the soil onto the smelly Potomac Flats, creating 600 acres of new parkland and the Tidal Basin, a water feature that flushed the new Washington Channel.
Peter Conover Hains, a US Army engineer, built Potomac Park and the Tidal Basin with the Corps of Engineers in the 1880's.
A map drawn by Peter Hains showing the Potomac Park in 1890.
East Potomac Park in the 1940's. The tip of the peninsula created by the US Army Corps of Engineers would be named Hains Point in honor of its creator.
Dredges fill what would become East Potomac Park in the 1880s |