The Coolidge examiner., 1936-07-03
Prepared by National Geographic Society,

Prepared by National Geographic Society.
Washington, d. C.-WNU Service.
~ USSES, trains, and private au-
X tOmsbiles are disgorging gay
- throngs, and hotels, streets,
and public buildings are bulging
with enthusiastic humanity as Wash
ington meets the annual massed at
tack of spring and early summer
visitors.
Timid grammar school students,
clinging to more worldly adults;
high school graduates, who have
been saving for a tour of the city
throughout their four-year school
terms; and adults whose budgets
met excursion transportation rates
are inspired by the wonders of their
Capital.
Handsome new government build
ings, museums, art galleries, beau
tifully Handicapped parks; broad,
tree-shaded avenues Mount Vernon,
Arlington, the graceful, Gothic lime
stone bulk of the Washington cathe-
dral where Woodrow Wilson is
buried, great churches, and the
city's splendid educational and
scientific institutions are the chief
objects of interest to the brief Wis
itor.
Unfortunately many of this group
miss one of the most striking scenic
features near the Capitalize Great
Falls of the Potomac IN nearby Vir-
ginia and Maryland, and the rivers
gorge. The broad, calm stream that
flows by Potomac park, separating
Washington and Virginia, narr0ws
suddenly above the city. Its shores
change from bottom lands and gen.
tly rolling hills to take on the stern
er aspect of palisades, cut at fire.
Quent intervals by deep gullieS,
through some of which small
streams enter the river in tumultu-
Gus cascades.
On the Virginia side, where the
cliffs rise almost sheer from the wa
ter's edge, these ravines are so steep
and so numerous that a journey
along the bluffs entails more travel
vertically than in a horizontal d.
rection.
The Three Sisters.
Just above the handsome Francis
Scott Key bridge and the old Aque-
duct bridge, which formerly carried
a canal across the river, the trio
of jagged rocks known as the Three
Sisters recall a romantic legend of
the Red Men who once roamed
these rugged shores.
According to the tradition, these
rocks mark the place where the
three daughters of an Analostan
chief were caught in a whirlpool
and dragged to their watery grave.
They were padding across the riv-
er, so the story goes, to secret
tryst with their POwhatan lovers on
the Virginia shore; but the river
demons intervened and, after ac-
complishing the destruction of the
sisters, caused the three gloomy
rocks to rise from the spot where
their bodies sank beneath the waves.
The Virginia and Maryland
shores converge rapidly as one jour-
neys up the river. until few miles
above Washington they are separat-
ed by less than 100 feet of water
now swift and turbulent.
Above Little Falls, which is a
series of rapids, the river widens
again. Numerous islands spangle
the Maryland shore, while Virginia's
cliffs become wilder and more
rugged. The waters pursue more
leisurely course here, but it is only
a temporary calm before the storm,
and Is miles above the Capital they
gather for majestic plunge over a
wall of granite which all the Poto-
macs ages of work has been unable
to wear down.
These falls offer a scene of i'm
pressive grandeur. Heaps of rocks
are scattered abOut-epormous gran
ite powders and Jagged reefs of
gneiss-as if some Titan Of long ago
had vented his wrath by upheaving
the crust of the earth itself. The
wilderness of the place, as the wa
ters churn and boil in their never
ending warfare with the rocks, is
comparable only to some of the
larger mountain canyons of the
West, and is hard to conceive as be-
ing within a few miles of the Cap
ital city.
The Gorge and Old Canal.
Normally the river here tumbles
through a rather narrow channel
in it's race for the Chesapeake, but
when spring melts the mountain
SHOWS and deluged valleys pour
their Overflowing streams into it's
upper reaches, the falls become a
sWirling flood that RACES from shore
to shore with a roar that may be
heard for miles. -.-|r -
The odd Chesapeake and Ohio
canal, which paralleled the Potomac
from Georgetown up to and on be-
yond the falls, was begun about the
same time as the Baltimore and