This Year, Marking a Scrappy Start

Centennial Celebrations Will Revisit Del Ray's Juicy History of Gambling, Protests and Enterprise

Del Ray has been called one of the best places to live in the Washington area. It was chosen as one of the top 10 cottage communities in the country. And it has been feted in national newspapers and magazines as a funky neighborhood "Where Main Street Still Exists."

And to think it all started 100 years ago with a run-down racetrack and a seedy gambling hall.

In 1908, the respectable and law-abiding residents of the newly built commuter suburbs of St. Elmo and Del Ray had had enough of the boozy betting and womanizing at the rather inaptly named Gentlemen's Driving Club situated right in their midst. They wanted to shut it down. ("There are no gentlemen at this club and there's been no driving in years," one critic spat.)

The Alexandria City Council was no help. Nor were the local police. Rumor had it that the gambling hall, which cleared about $150,000 a year in profit, also handsomely paid off its supporters on the council. The commonwealth's attorney estimated at the time that the club paid out $12,000 a year in graft, no small sum in turn-of-the-century America.

The commonwealth's attorney hadn't had much success over the years in the courtroom. In 1904, he had organized a posse of ax- and bat-wielding citizens who broke into the gambling hall, smashed the tables and big blackboard that listed the odds on all the horse races across the country, tore up the betting slip and threw the telegraph machines -- bets were still made and money wired via telegraph -- into the Potomac River.

That didn't work either.

"They just bounced right back; they were making so much money," said Leland Ness, Del Ray's unofficial historian.

The only thing the residents of Del Ray and St. Elmo could think to do next, Ness said, was to incorporate, pass their own laws, hire their own police and shut the place down. On March 15, 1908, that's exactly what they did. And the Town of Potomac was born.

The gambling hall "was frequented by the sorts of people you'd not want to meet in an alley at night and women of questionable virtues. And this was not the kind of place locals wanted," Ness said. "The history of Del Ray is really about local control, with people saying 'We're sick and tired of having laws enforced by people we can't vote for.' The racetrack is a very important part of the story," Ness said.

And now that Del Ray will be turning 100 on March 15, the community will be telling its story all year, with parades, proms, potlucks, silent auctions, tours of historic houses and community events with a centennial twist.

The fight against the St. Asaph racetrack -- which in its heyday from 1895 to 1897 had stables for hundreds of horses and an enormous grandstand -- united the community and forged its identity. (When Virginia outlawed horse racing in 1897, the track fell into disrepair, but the Hiawatha Pleasure and Social Club lived on.) It was the electric trolley from the District, which ran down Commonwealth Avenue, that created that community in the first place, one of the first bedroom communities in the country.

Before the trolley, which opened in 1896, only the wealthy could afford to live outside the city and commute. But the cheap and efficient trolley opened up the possibility for middle- and working-class folks to have their own little piece of breathing room outside the city. In 1894, Ohio developers Wood & Harmon bought two parcels of farmland, laid out streets and began selling lots for $135 to $150, with a $1 down payment. They lured would-be buyers with the prospect of a free one-year commuting ticket.