Piscataway Park

The Moyaone Reserve is a neighborhood located within Piscataway Park in Accokeek. The neighborhood was given National Register of Historic Places status in 2020 and is within the historic viewshed of Mount Vernon. It is split between Prince George's County, Maryland and Charles County, Maryland. The name Moyaone is derived from name of the town Moyaone, the major town of the Piscataway Native American tribe. The archaeological remains of Moyaone are at the Accokeek Creek Site, within Piscataway Park. The Moyaone is bordered to the north by Piscataway Creek, to the east by MD Route 210, and to the west is Marshall Hall Road. The Moyaone Reserve is governed by the Moyaone Association.

Marshall Hall, Maryland is the site of the Marshall family mansion. It is now part of Piscataway Park operated by the National Park Service. Marshall Hall is located near Bryans Road in Charles County, Maryland, next to the Potomac River, more or less across from Mount Vernon, Virginia, the home of George Washington. The home was one of the finest built on the Maryland shore of the Potomac in the early 18th century. The Marshall family were minor gentry and owned as many as 80 slaves by the early 19th century.Soon after the Civil War, the site became a highly frequented picnic ground because of its proximity to Mount Vernon. Steamship lines, originally established to ferry tourists from Washington D.C. and Alexandria to/from Mount Vernon, discovered a new source of revenue in the park across from the historic estate. In the 1880s, the Mount Vernon and Marshall Hall Steamboat Company ran large ships between Washington, Alexandria, Mount Vernon and Marshall Hall: the round-trip fare at that time was $1, and included admission to Mount Vernon. Washingtonians fled the summer heat of the city for all sorts of events at the picnic grounds, from exclusive catered events to popular cultural events such as a swimming exhibition given by the daredevil Robert Emmet Odlum in the summer of 1878, seven years before his death at the Brooklyn Bridge. Marshall Hall later became one of the first amusement parks in the Washington, D.C., area in the 1890s, offering numerous "appliances of entertainment" (as one deed described them) for visitors who wanted to do more than picnic, many of them arriving by river boat. Starting in the 1870s, annual jousting tournaments took place at the site. New attractions were added throughout the 20th century, and gambling became a major draw for a while after World War II. Between 1949 and 1968, the Southern Maryland area offered the only legal slot machines in the United States outside of Nevada. The National Park Service gained control of the park after Congress, acting upon a request from the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, mandated that the views from Mt. Vernon had to be protected and returned to something resembling the days when George Washington sat on his colonnaded porch and looked across the Potomac. The term "historic viewshed" was coined for this act of preservation. The Park Service tore down all vestiges of the amusement park in 1980, whose popularity had declined due to competition by much larger, newer parks. A fire destroyed much of the colonial house soon after. In January 2003, a truck driver slammed his rig through the remaining hulk. The damage done to the brick shell was repaired the following year.

In 1830, an attempt was made to steal the skull from the remains of American president George Washington, which resided in a tomb at Mount Vernon. Instead, the thief mistakenly removed the skull from the remains of one of Judge Bushrod Washington's in-laws. The desecration of the burial site prompted a new, more secure, burial vault to be constructed.

Mount Vernon is an American landmark and former plantation of Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States George Washington and his wife, Martha. The estate is on the banks of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia. It is located south of Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia, and is across the river from Prince George's County, Maryland. The Washington family acquired land in the area in 1674. Around 1734, the family embarked on an expansion of its estate that continued under George Washington, who began leasing the estate in 1754 before becoming its sole owner in 1761.The mansion was built of wood in a loose Palladian style; the original house was built by George Washington's father Augustine, around 1734. George Washington expanded the house twice, once in the late 1750s and again in the 1770s. It remained Washington's home for the rest of his life. Following his death in 1799, under the ownership of several successive generations of the family, the estate progressively declined as revenues were insufficient to maintain it adequately. In 1858, the house's historical importance was recognized and it was taken over by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association; this organization acquired it together with part of the Washington property estate. The mansion and its surrounding buildings did escape damage from the American Civil War suffered by many properties located within the Confederate States of America. Mount Vernon was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is still owned and maintained in trust by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, being daily open to the public. Allowing people to see the estate is part of an over 200-year-old tradition started by George Washington. In 1794 he wrote: "I have no objection to any sober or orderly person's gratifying their curiosity in viewing the buildings, Gardens, &ca. about Mount Vernon."

The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon is the presidential library of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Located at Washington's home in Mount Vernon, Virginia, the library was built by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and is privately funded. It is named for the chairman of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation which donated $38 million to the project. The library officially opened September 27, 2013.

Belvoir was the plantation and estate of colonial Virginia's prominent William Fairfax family. Operated with the forced labor of enslaved people, it sat on the west bank of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia, at the present site of Fort Belvoir. The main house — called Belvoir Manor or Belvoir Mansion — burned in 1783 and was destroyed during the War of 1812. The site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973 as "Belvoir Mansion Ruins and the Fairfax Grave."

The Raid on Alexandria was a British victory during the War of 1812, which gained much plunder at little cost but may have contributed to the later British repulse at Baltimore by delaying their main forces.

Pomonkey Creek is a 1.8-mile-long (2.9 km) tidal tributary of the Potomac River, near Bryans Road, Maryland. It is named for the Pamunkey tribe of Native Americans that lived in the area.

Little Hunting Creek is a 3.6-mile-long (5.8 km) primarily tidal tributary of the Potomac River located in Fairfax County, Virginia, not to be confused with Hunting Creek farther north. A stone-arch bridge, completed in 1931, carries traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway across the narrow mouth of the creek, located 96.6 miles (155.5 km) upriver from the mouth of the Potomac. The Washington family built its Mount Vernon plantation on the Potomac River along both banks of Little Hunting Creek during colonial times. The creek is bordered by residential communities in addition to the Mount Vernon property. It is a popular location for recreational fishing, and much of the wildlife characteristic of the tidal Potomac wetlands can be spotted there.

Tower House, also known as Edgewater and Marsland-on-the-Potomac, is a historic home located near Alexandria, in Fairfax County, Virginia. The original portion was built in 1888 by John Young, who inherited the land from his father, Lewis, in 1879. At that time it was in the Italian Villa style. An addition was added to the rear in 1888-9 by owner, Isaac N. Jones. The house was remodeled to its present form in 1900-1901 by railroad executive James Yeomans. James A. Drain, Sr. owned it from 1920 until 1936. He renamed it Marsland-on-the-Potomac after the maiden name of his wife Ethel. From 1941 until 1994, the religious group Baraca Philathea used it for various purposes. Since then, it has undergone extensive restoration by its present owner. It is a 2+1⁄2-story frame dwelling in a transitional Queen Anne-Colonial Revival style. It features a steeply pitched hipped roof and a prominent, semi-circular corner tower.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

The Mount Vernon Trail (MVT) is a 17-mile (27 km) long shared use path that travels along the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Northern Virginia between Rosslyn and George Washington's home at Mount Vernon. The trail connects the easternmost portions of Arlington County, the City of Alexandria, and Fairfax County, and travels mostly on dedicated trail with a small portion on city streets. As part of U.S. Bike Route 1, the Potomac Heritage Trail and the East Coast Greenway, the MVT opened in April 1972 as a gravel path and was subsequently expanded and paved.The MVT is part of the much larger mid-Atlantic Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail.

Accokeek Creek Site, also known as Moyaone, is an archaeological site in Prince George's County, Maryland, located along the Potomac River across from Mount Vernon in today's Piscataway Park, which was inhabited intermittently since 2000 BC. Accokeek Creek Site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.