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Gravelly Point

AC with 0 elementsArlington County, Virginia geography stubsGeorge Washington Memorial ParkwayParks in Arlington County, VirginiaPotomac River
Rugby union stadiums in Washington, D.C.Virginia municipal and county parks
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Gravelly Point is an area within the National Park Service's George Washington Memorial Parkway in Arlington County, Virginia, in the United States. It is located on the west side of the Potomac River, north of Roaches Run and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.The paved Mount Vernon Trail travels through the area. A rugby pitch hosts high school rugby matches. The area also has a boat launch and a Capital Bikeshare dock. Gravelly Point is a popular spot for plane spotters and others to watch planes take off and land from Reagan National Airport. Airplanes pass between 100 and 200 feet overhead when landing on Runway 19 or taking off from Runway 1.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Gravelly Point (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Gravelly Point
Mount Vernon Trail, Arlington

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Wikipedia: Gravelly PointContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 38.8651 ° E -77.0391 °
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Gravelly Point

Mount Vernon Trail
20310 Arlington
Virginia, United States
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Fort Jackson (Virginia)
Fort Jackson (Virginia)

Fort Jackson was an American Civil War-era fortification in Virginia that defended the southern end of the Long Bridge, near Washington, D.C. Long Bridge connected Washington, D.C. to Northern Virginia and served as a vital transportation artery for the Union Army during the war. Fort Jackson was named for Jackson City, a seedy suburb of Washington that had been established on the south side of the Long Bridge in 1835. It was built in the days immediately following the Union Army's occupation of Northern Virginia in May 1861. The fort was initially armed with four cannon used to protect the bridge, but these were removed after the completion of the Arlington Line, a line of defenses built to the south. After 1862, the fort lacked weapons except for small arms and consisted of a wooden palisade backed by earthworks. Two cannon were restored to the fort in 1864 following the Battle of Fort Stevens. The garrison consisted of a single company of Union soldiers who inspected traffic crossing the bridge and guarded it from potential saboteurs. Following the final surrender of the Confederate States of America in 1865, Fort Jackson was abandoned. The lumber used in its construction was promptly salvaged for firewood and construction materials and, due to its proximity to the Long Bridge, the earthworks were flattened in order to provide easier access to Long Bridge. In the early 20th century, the fort's site was used for the footings and approaches to several bridges connecting Virginia and Washington. Today, no trace of the fort remains, though the site of the fort is contained within Arlington County's Long Bridge Park, and a National Park Service 2004 survey of the site indicated some archaeological remnants may still remain beneath the park.

14th Street bridges
14th Street bridges

The 14th Street bridges refers to the three bridges near each other that cross the Potomac River, connecting Arlington, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Sometimes the two nearby rail bridges are included as part of the 14th Street bridge complex. A major gateway for automotive, bicycle and rail traffic, the bridge complex is named for 14th Street (U.S. Route 1), which feeds automotive traffic into it on the D.C. end. The complex contains three four-lane automobile bridges — including, from west to east, one southbound, one bi-directional, and one northbound — that carry Interstate 395 (I-395) and U.S. Route 1 (US 1) traffic, as well as a bicycle and pedestrian lane on the southbound bridge. In addition, the complex contains two rail bridges, one of which carries the Yellow Line of the Washington Metro; the other of which, the only mainline rail crossing of the Potomac River to Virginia, carries a CSX Transportation rail line. The five bridges, from west to east are the George Mason Memorial Bridge, the Rochambeau Bridge, the Arland D. Williams, Jr. Memorial Bridge, the Charles R. Fenwick Bridge and the Long Bridge. At the north end of the bridges, in East Potomac Park, the three roadways connect to a pair of two-way bridges over the Washington Channel into downtown Washington, one connecting to traffic (including northbound US 1) north onto 14th Street, and the other connecting to I-395 traffic on the Southwest Freeway. The Metro line connects to a tunnel in the East Potomac Park, and the main line railroad from the Long Bridge passes over I-395 and runs over the Washington Channel just downstream of the 14th Street approach before turning northeast along the line of Maryland Avenue. On January 13, 1982, 78 people were killed when Air Florida Flight 90 clipped the northbound I-395 span of the 14th Street bridge during rush hour and crashed into the Potomac river. The repaired span was renamed in honor of Arland D. Williams Jr., a passenger on the plane who survived the initial crash, but drowned after repeatedly passing a helicopter rescue line to other survivors.

Air Florida Flight 90
Air Florida Flight 90

Air Florida Flight 90 was a scheduled U.S. domestic passenger flight operated by Air Florida from Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) to Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport, with an intermediate stopover at Tampa International Airport. On January 13, 1982, the Boeing 737-222 registered as N62AF crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River.Striking the bridge, which carries Interstate 395 between Washington, DC, and Arlington County, Virginia, it hit seven occupied vehicles and destroyed 97 feet (30 m) of guard rail: 5  before plunging through the ice into the Potomac River. The aircraft was carrying 74 passengers and five crew members. Only four passengers and one crew member (a flight attendant) were rescued from the crash and survived. Another passenger, Arland D. Williams, Jr., assisted in the rescue of the survivors, but drowned before he could be rescued. Four motorists on the bridge were killed. The survivors were rescued from the icy river by civilians and professionals. President Ronald Reagan commended these acts during his State of the Union speech a few days later. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the cause of the accident was pilot error. The pilots failed to switch on the engines' internal ice protection systems, used reverse thrust in a snowstorm prior to takeoff, tried to use the jet exhaust of a plane in front of them to melt their ice, and failed to abandon the takeoff even after detecting a power problem while taxiing and having ice and snow build up on the wings.