page_title: Three Sisters Bridge
section_title: Proposed George Washington Memorial Parkway bridge
hierarchical_section_title: Three Sisters Bridge / Early bridge proposals / Proposed George Washington Memorial Parkway bridge
caption_attribution_description: English: George Washington Memorial Parkway near Rosslyn, Virginia, in the United States. The Potomac River is at the right. The Three Sisters, rocky islets in the Potomac River, can also be seen.
context_page_description: The Three Sisters Bridge was a planned bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., with piers on the Three Sisters islets. Envisioned in the 1950s and formally proposed in the 1960s, it was cancelled amid protests in the 1970s.
  A bridge over the Potomac in the same location was first proposed in 1789, and bridges have been planned every few decades since then. In the 1950s, the creation of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the extension of the parkway onto the north side of the Potomac River from Chain Bridge to Carderock, Maryland, led to calls to turn Canal Road NW into a highway and to build a bridge over the Three Sisters to link the two sections of parkway. The rationale for a Three Sisters Bridge changed over the years. At one time, the bridge was to be part of the "Inner Loop" system of spoke-and-hub freeways planned for the District of Columbia. At another, it was intended to bring then-unbuilt Interstate 66 into the city.
  The bridge proposal proved highly contentious and is a notable example of a "highway revolt". Local residents of the Georgetown neighborhood and the citywide Committee of 100 on the Federal City opposed the bridge.
context_section_description: In 1928, Congress authorized the construction of a parkway from Mount Vernon, Virginia, to Arlington Memorial Bridge in Arlington County, Virginia. The parkway was named the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway.  The following year, the highway was renamed the George Washington Memorial Parkway by Congress, which authorized its extension to the Great Falls of the Potomac.
  A bridge was part of the 1929 parkway expansion. The idea for an enlarged parkway honoring George Washington came from Representative Louis C. Cramton, who introduced legislation in January 1929 to construct a larger system of roads and parks in the D.C. metropolitan area. In the Senate, the bill was amended by Carter Glass to include a bridge across the Potomac at the Great Falls of the Potomac. Congress enacted the "Act of May 29, 1930" (46 Stat. 482) — more commonly known as the Capper-Cramton Act — to establish the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The act appropriated $13.5 million to acquire land and build a parkway on the Virginia shoreline from Mount Vernon to the Great Falls of the Potomac (excluding the city of Alexandria), and to build a parkway on the Maryland shoreline from Fort Washington, Maryland, to the Great Falls of the Potomac (excluding the District of Columbia). (This section is now known as the Clara Barton Parkway.)  The bridge across the Potomac at or near the Great Falls was included in the final bill.
  Construction work on the George Washington Memorial Parkway was fitful, and the bridge was eventually cancelled. Construction began in the 1940s and continued into the 1960s. The Capper-Cramton Act received amendments in 1946, 1952, and 1958, both funding and terminating portions of the unbuilt parkway. The most significant changes came when Congress declined to fund construction of the segments from Fort Washington to the District of Columbia, from I-495 in Virginia to the Great Falls, and from MacArthur Boulevard/Carderock north to the Great Falls. Opposition to these segments emerged from the Izaak Walton League, the Wilderness Society, and other groups, which argued that the environmental damage caused by these segments would be too severe to justify their construction. (The portion of the parkway on the north shore of the Potomac would not be renamed the Clara Barton Parkway until 1989.)
caption: The George Washington Memorial Parkway near Rosslyn, Virginia. The Three Sisters can be seen in the Potomac River, right.
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