cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (10/19/90)
Columbia Island is a part of DC that is "across the Potomac". In telecom terms, that means (at least when I took a walk through this area in the late 1970s) that the pay phone in its park area just off the George Washington Memorial Parkway is on a DC, not Virginia, exchange. This is where you end up if you cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge (old U.S. 50) going from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Arlington National Cemetery. Even though the island is "across the Potomac", it's still DC, and you have to cross the Boundary Channel (I don't know if it's manmade) to enter Virginia as you continue toward the cemetery. Also in Washington DC: Theodore Roosevelt Island (between the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge and the Key Bridge) has no phones that I know of, and is reached by a foot bridge from Virginia but is, according to a map, in DC.
smk@attunix.att.com (S M Krieger) (10/22/90)
> Columbia Island is a part of DC that is "across the Potomac". In > telecom terms, that means (at least when I took a walk through this > area in the late 1970s) that the pay phone in its park area just off > the George Washington Memorial Parkway is on a DC, not Virginia, > exchange. > Also in Washington DC: Theodore Roosevelt Island (between the Theodore > Roosevelt Bridge and the Key Bridge) has no phones that I know of, and > is reached by a foot bridge from Virginia but is, according to a map, > in DC. Maybe this will simplify it. While the nominal boundary between Maryland and Virginia is the Potomac River, the entire river is part of Maryland (unlike the Delaware between NJ and PA or the Hudson between NJ and NY, where the middle of the river is the boundary). Thus when Maryland and Virginia together donated the ten mile square for the national capital, any Potomac River islands came from Maryland. Therefore nothing in the river was part of the land returned to Virginia in 1846. Stan Krieger Summit, NJ ...!att!attunix!smk