Post-326: Cornerstone of Washington, D.C.

To look at it, the plain-looking building above would appear, to the reasonable person’s eye, to be a house, probably an old one. The reasonable person would be exactly half right (if counting by the letter).

It is actually a lighthouse. Believe it or not… Jones Point Lighthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. It is the southernmost point of the original District of Columbia.

I was there on December 11th, 2015, on my way to Mount Vernon by bicycle. The weather reached 70 F (21 C) and I had just finished an exam the previous day.

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Washington, D.C. was originally a perfect square, ten miles on each side, and any square will have corner points. This lighthouse was D.C.’s southern corner point. (The stone marker actually says “Historic Boundary,” because the Virginia side was returned in the 1800s.)

The red marker on the below map is anchored where the photo was taken. You can zoom in on this map all the way down. The anchor-point is exactly where I was standing, facing south.

The original cornerstone, placed in 1791, demarcating the boundary of the new federal district, also stands at Jones Point, and I sought it out. It was difficult to find.

Below: Along the Potomac River. To my right is the lighthouse. The lighthouse’s small shed is visible here (The same shed is visible in the above photo, behind the bicycle).

Below: The front of the lighthouse. I am standing almost in the Potomac River.

Above, directly under the door of the lighthouse, a curious opening exists. Easy to miss; very easy to miss; it values its peace and quiet. On closer inspection, this opening turns out to contain the cornerstone. Up close:

“The oldest existing physical monument associated with the federal city of Washington, D.C.”

Completely unremarkable!  No inscriptions are visible. Nothing obviously distinguishes it from a rock never touched by human hands.

“The inscription on the south cornerstone, worn by weather and water, is now illegible.” A small example of the power of Time to erase the works of man.

Two hundred and twenty-four years. That doesn’t seem so long. What would 2,000 years do? 20,000 years?

Say a great civilization existed long ago. Call it “Atlantis.” Say Atlantis’ monuments and buildings fell into disuse after a civilizational collapse or a mega disaster event. Is it possible that all of Atlantis’ monuments and buildings could’ve been wiped away with nary a trace left for us to find today, that all its structures became indistinguishable from natural features over time? Which leaves us with Atlantis the Legend, rather than Atlantis the Fact.

Maybe the case of the weathering of the Washington, D.C. cornerstone seems trivial. Think of it this way: Each  concept or emotion is as a reservoir, and different experiences “tap in” to different extents. I may have but splashed a few drops. Shelley’s traveler, meanwhile, upon his discovery of the ruins of the statue of Ozymandias, took a headfirst dive into the very same reservoir (but it was the same reservoir):