The Long Story of The Jones Point Ropewalk

The Long Story of The Jones Point Ropewalk (HM2D3O)

Location: Alexandria, VA 22314
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Country: United States of America
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N 38° 47.444', W 77° 2.515'

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Inscription

1833-1850

—Jones Point Park —

In 1833, Josiah Davis constructed a narrow, 400-yard-long building where rope was manufactured for ship's rigging, a once-thriving maritime industry for the nearby port of Alexandria.

[Caption:]
The Jones Point ropewalk was a two-story building with larger wheels than are pictured here, but the process of making rope was the same. Walking backward between two reels a spinner unwound lengths of hemp from around the waist and spun the fiber in each hand to create rope. A spinner could walk as much as 20 miles in a 10-hour workday.

Archaeological Evidence
Excavations at Jones Point revealed the remains of the ropewalk's foundations and a black stain down the middle—probably from the tar applied to cordage to resist rotting from seawater.

...every afternoon during the summer, it was the custom of the boys to go thither after school...to indulge in the luxury of a bath. They began to undress in the western part, and run naked through the long building...

At the entrance on the west there was a huge reel for rope, on which the boys used to stand and turn each other over, the rise and fall being probably twenty feet, and on occasion a boy threw out his back as he passed the second story window...
—Description of the abandoned Jones Point ropewalk,



Academy Journal, June 3, 1873

In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their
threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

—Henry Worth Longfellow, 1859
Details
HM NumberHM2D3O
Tags
Placed ByNational Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior
Marker ConditionNo reports yet
Date Added Friday, December 28th, 2018 at 10:02pm PST -08:00
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Locationbig map
UTM (WGS84 Datum)18S E 322659 N 4295534
Decimal Degrees38.79073333, -77.04191667
Degrees and Decimal MinutesN 38° 47.444', W 77° 2.515'
Degrees, Minutes and Seconds38° 47' 26.64" N, 77° 2' 30.9" W
Driving DirectionsGoogle Maps
Area Code(s)202, 703, 571
Closest Postal AddressAt or near Mt Vernon Trail, Alexandria VA 22314, US
Alternative Maps Google Maps, MapQuest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, MSR Maps, OpenCycleMap, MyTopo Maps, OpenStreetMap

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