Whites Ferry:
Population 9 and Nature

By Paul W. Valentine
Washington Post Staff Writer
October 01, 1994

When the mist is just clearing off the silent Potomac River at daybreak in Whites Ferry, “It’s nice to watch the sunrise,” said Bob Adams, surveying the water gliding by this historic crossing.

Adams, 53, is not a tourist or one of the 200 commuters who use the 15-car ferry daily to get from rural western Montgomery County in Maryland to Loudoun County near Leesburg in Virginia.

He lives and works at Whites Ferry, one of three men who, with their families, operate the 166-year-old ferry service as well as a general store where travelers can stop for anything from canoe rentals to a made-to-order plate of pancakes for breakfast.

It is the only ferry on the Potomac.

“I like it,” said Adams, wearing a curl-brimmed Australian campaign hat as he waves cars onto the 69.9-ton ferryboat, shuts its swinging metal gate and fires up the 100-horsepower, air-cooled Deutz engine for the 1,000-foot crossing. “I get to meet different people from all walks of life.”

The three families have chosen to live close by the river amid the ever-changing colors of willows and oaks, the company of herons, beaver and deer and the unpredictable moods and rhythms of the Potomac. They comprise Whites Ferry, Md., population nine.

Adams, his wife, Dolores, and their 14-year-old daughter, Jill, share a cinder-block duplex with Steve Workman, Kris Kreeger and their 18-month-old girl, Angel. Above the store next door live Wayne Greathouse, his wife, Debbie, and her mother, Jean Meredith.

The men operate the ferry and the women run the store, including preparing meals and renting boats, oars and life jackets. The ferry goes 18 hours a day, seven days a week, from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Nearly three acres of fresh-mowed fields with a wooden pavilion and parking lot for picnics surround the ferry entrance, abutting the now drained Chesapeake&Ohio Canal that parallels the Potomac.

“The seasons are gorgeous,” said Kris Kreeger, 32, who spends off-hours walking the canal towpath. “It’s so peaceful.”

“And there’re no city lights at night,” added Bob Adams, noting that Washington is 36 miles downstream to the southeast.

Malcolm Brown, whose family has owned Whites Ferry since 1946, is on hand most days, as is ferry manager Tom Newman, though both live some distance away.

“I’ve kept the place low-key and quiet,” said Brown, 47, despite attempts by entrepreneurs to commercialize the ferry landing with “flea markets and other tourist-type things... . I said, ‘No, I want to keep the focus on the ferry.’ “

With Whites Ferry the only Potomac crossing between the Capital Beltway near Washington and the U.S. Route 15 bridge at Point of Rocks 10 miles upstream in Frederick County, scores of commuters use the ferry to get to work in ever-growing Loudoun and Montgomery counties.

Sightseers, including motorcyclists, bicyclists and hikers, also jam the ferry on weekends, especially in good weather. “We’ll get 1,300 cars on a primo weekend,” Brown said. Fares range from $2.50 for cars to 50 cents for bicyclists and pedestrians. Trucks can cost up to $8, depending on their length.

Aside from a small number of rental canoes and skiffs for fishing and river trips, Brown rents the pavilion and grounds for occasional company picnics, family reunions and weddings.

Ferry manager Newman, 49, makes sure the boat is in proper operating condition and meets U.S. Coast Guard safety standards. The ferry Gen. Jubal A. Early, named for a Confederate military leader in the Civil War, replaced a smaller boat of the same name in 1988.

As it chugs across the river, it is guided by a 1 1/8-inch-thick steel cable that stretches from the landing on the Montgomery County side to the Virginia side.

While official Maryland state maps spell Whites Ferry without an apostrophe, owner Brown insists it should be spelled “White’s Ferry.” He has carried on a lighthearted dispute with officialdom over the years, and signs on his property clearly reflect his preference.

After all, he said, “it’s not plural. It’s possessive.”

The flow of the river is subject to wide fluctuations, and flooding is common, especially in the early spring when the Whites Ferry store and cinder-block duplex are sometimes threatened.

“When you play with fire, you’re going to get burned,” Newman said. “When you live near a river, you’re going to get flooded.”

“We got out [of the duplex] in a boat in March 1993,” Kris Kreeger recalled.

Even higher water levels are marked and dated on the Whites Ferry store building where floods reached the second floor from torrential rains in the past, including Tropical Storm Agnes on June 24, 1972.

Nevertheless, Newman said, life on the river is good.

“I always tell people I’m on vacation,” he said. “Where else can you run a boat all day and talk to people?”

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