Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial

One highlight of our recent trip to the District of Columbia was a visit to the Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial. Here is GE shot of the Island in the urban context, with Arlington, VA on the left (west) and the Lincoln Memorial and part of the National Mall recognizable on the right.



Aside from the Memorial Space, the fountains of which had been drained and were under repair, and a trail system, the island appears natural and undeveloped and is a peaceful and shaded contrast to the surrounding cities.



In the above picture our dog is swimming in the channel near the northwestern corner of the island, with the buildings of Arlington rising above the trees of the river buffer. For her, this excursion was a welcome break from the highly recommended downtown dog boarding facility where she spent most of her time.



This image shows a debris jam on the eastern side of the island and a view across the main channel of the Potomac River to the Washington side. Walking around on the island one gets a feeling of being in just about any eastern woodland forest miles from the city. The picture below could have been taken at Duke Forest or Eno State Park in Piedmont North Carolina. We saw a turtle at the southern end of the island in the estuary and two deer in the woods on the ridge in the middle of the island.



The park features extensive woody wetlands containing the non-native yellow flag iris and the indigenous Sagittaria latifolia, or broadleaf arrowhead. A boardwalk traverses much of the wetlands. There are also marshes and an estuary draining the island to the south. Signage indicates that although the system is too far from the Atlantic Ocean for salt water to be of any influence, the level of inundation is affected by tides.






Your humble narrator poses at an estuary observation platform. A three-shot panorama stitched in PhotoShop. You can click on the image to open a larger version, and click again to make it even larger, and look for the seams, but you won't find them.



A four-photo wide shot of the estuary stitched in PhotoShop.



An unusual view of the Lincoln Memorial under the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge.


An interesting "room" under the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge.


The route we took mapped in Google Earth. The park was used extensively by joggers throughout the day and into the evening. We were able to park on the Arlington side and walk across a pedestrian bridge (visible in the middle of the western channel in this aerial image) to get onto the island. The residents of Arlington and the district are fortunate to have such a large wilderness area in such proximity in the form of a national park. In Starkville terms, it would be like having the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge as a five minute walk from campus. Such a thing is still possible: South Farm has potential wilderness area and there are various undeveloped or blighted areas all around town. Oh but such thoughts are mere dreams buffeted by the flimsy tubes and html codes of the internet.