ALEXANDRIA, Va. — On June 16, 1809, a petition was filed with the Virginia General Assembly to construct a new turnpike linking Alexandria with Fredericksburg, roughly 50 miles to the south. Construction began soon after on a causeway across the Great Hunting Creek and a road that pushed through what was then the rural wilderness of eastern Fairfax County, passing the Huntley meadows, Mount Vernon, Woodlawn and the town of Woodbridge.
The same year, a second new turnpike was built north of Alexandria. That road, running roughly along what is now Powhatan Street, extended from the northern dead-end of Washington Street to connect with the Long Bridge across the Potomac River, finally providing a direct road link between Alexandria and Washington Counties — the two original counties that made up the District of Columbia.
Together, the two roads transformed Alexandria’s place in the region’s transportation network.
Alexandria as a port and a place in transition
In 1809, Alexandria was a busy commercial port — the largest town in what was then the District of Columbia, of which it had been part since 1791. Tobacco warehouses, flour mills, ship chandlers and rope makers lined the waterfront, and the city’s merchants moved goods to ports up and down the Atlantic coast. But Alexandria’s connection to the agricultural interior of Virginia was poor, and the routes connecting Alexandria to its neighbors — Washington City (today’s Washington, D.C.) to the north, Fredericksburg to the south, and the Shenandoah Valley to the west — were rough, slow and often nearly impassable in winter…