Is This the End of D.C.’s Most-Beloved Hidden Landmark?

Within the hills of Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, a whole bunch of stones, piled two tales excessive, have sat, largely unmolested aside from curious passersby, as moss and vines subsumed them into the forest.

What makes the stones outstanding, nevertheless, is their origin: They had been as soon as part of america Capitol, about seven miles to the south. Whereas the Capitol Stones maintain nationwide significance, they’ve been a treasured native secret—a uncommon piece of American historical past that longtime residents can declare as their very own.

However quickly, the stones’ time at Rock Creek Park will come to an finish. Officers from the Nationwide Park Service will transfer them over the subsequent few years to a storage facility in Maryland, the place they may not be publicly accessible, experiences Bloomberg Authorities’s Jack Fitzpatrick.

“The stones are being moved on the request of the Nationwide Park Service for security, realignment and preservation functions,” says Kiren Marshall, a spokesperson for the Architect of the Capitol in a press assertion.

The stones date again to the early 1800s, when the Capitol underwent in depth reconstruction after British troops set fireplace to the constructing throughout the Struggle of 1812, inflicting devastating injury. Greater than a century later, within the Nineteen Fifties, renovations led to the stones’ substitute. Together with the Capitol’s outdated Corinthian columns, the stones spent a brief stint in storage on the Capitol Energy Plant. Per Bloomberg Authorities, they remained there till as late as 1972.

Within the Eighties, the outdated columns moved to the Nationwide Arboretum, the place they’re nonetheless a preferred—and formally sanctioned—vacationer attraction. The stones, alternatively, had been dumped in Rock Creek Park.

Since then, they’ve turn out to be a beloved landmark, entrenched in metropolis lore. Situated beside upkeep workplaces, they’re stacked in haphazard piles. Park hikers take footage with their canine on the web site, or deliver their kids there to play. One native artist, Carlos Carmonamedina, even sells postcards that includes the stones. Nonetheless seen on lots of the stones are “intricate carvings which have barely been tainted by encroaching vines,” per DC Refined.

A part of their attract is “how they appeared to have been unceremoniously dumped into Rock Creek Park as if to be forgotten,” writes DCist’s Martin Austermuhle. “In a metropolis so well-planned and monumental, the stones [come] off because the historic underbelly.”

Final summer season, fencing appeared across the ruins, and metropolis residents began questioning about their destiny. Whereas officers had not commented on their plans till now, they’ve been within the works since 2020.

The transfer has garnered criticism from residents and officers alike. Within the phrases of a few of D.C. journalists and residents, stumbling upon the stones—the “badly-kept secret joy and shame of Rock Creek Park”—is a “magical” expertise, even a “[rite] of passage.” Even Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, weighed in on the choice to maneuver the stones.

“I’d like them stored in Rock Creek Park,” Norton tells Bloomberg Authorities. “Individuals go there anyway to take a look at them. And I feel forming a extra acceptable exhibit at Rock Creek Park could be the proper place for them.”

On Friday, Norton issued an announcement asking for a gathering with the Nationwide Park Service and the Architect of the Capitol to debate the way forward for the “off-the-beaten-path landmark.”

“The stones ought to stay within the location they’ve been for nearly 50 years whereas inflicting no hurt,” she stated. “Being stones, they’re well-made to face up to the climate and kids climbing on them, and entry to historic artifacts can solely be useful for guests to Rock Creek Park and the District.”