Photography By Dave Hawxhurst
Before there was Keno or off-track betting or racetrack slots palaces or Internet poker, Colonial Beach was where the action was. The small town on the Potomac in Virginia’s Northern Neck became a gambling mecca due to a geographical anomaly that places the Maryland-Virginia border at high tide on the Virginia shore. The piers jutting out from the Colonial Beach shore were technically located in wild and wooly Charles County, Md., where the slot machines and liquor-by-the-glass banned elsewhere in the Commonwealth were permitted to flourish. Gamblers from around the region—including some who swooped in on champagne seaplane flights from Washington and Richmond—flocked to pier-top casinos named Little Reno and Jackpot and Monte Carlo.
“I grew up there in the heyday of gambling,” says Sherryl Woods, the author of 100 romance novels (most recently Waking Up in Charleston) and a Colonial Beach “summer kid” since age four. “I was too young to play the slot machines—but that didn’t mean I didn’t get a nickel from my mama once in a while. The boardwalk was wonderful. It had arcades, a little train, the wonderful old Colonial Beach Hotel, and bingo, where you used little corn kernels to mark your card.”
The party ended in 1958 when Virginia persuaded Maryland to pull the plug on offshore gambling. The last vestige of the “Las Vegas on the Potomac” era vanished when Hurricane Isabel destroyed the Riverboat restaurant/Keno parlor—originally Little Reno—in 2003.
On a brief, way-out-of-season visit on President’s Day weekend, I checked into an even earlier piece of Colonial Beach history: the Bell House Bed & Breakfast, an 1882 riverside Victorian in the first house built on the Point, the narrow two-mile peninsula between the Potomac and Monroe Bay. “The house was once owned by Melville Bell, the father of Alexander Graham Bell,” Anne Bolin, the congenial owner tells me upon my arrival. “Melville Bell made it his summer home. Colonial Beach caught on when his friends from up in Georgetown started coming down to visit him.”
During the first half of the twentieth century, steamboats made regular sixty-five-mile runs from downtown D.C. to the scenic four-mile-wide stretch of the Potomac. Today, more remote seaside resorts get the summer tourists, and Colonial Beach—whose population of just over 3,000 doubles during the summer—has evolved into a kind of a well-kept secret. Parking is plentiful, the beaches are clean, and, yes, humans can safely immerse themselves in the Potomac River. The water is warm and the salinity close enough to the human body’s so that it doesn’t sting your eyes. (What may sting are jellyfish, but they don’t show up until later in the summer.)
Even during high summer season, Colonial Beach remains relatively horde-free, with traffic jams materializing only for the annual Potomac River Festival and Arts and Crafts Show (June 9-11 this year), with three days of parades, a majorette competition, and the crowning of a festival queen, and the Fourth of July, when a gigantic fireworks display off Town Pier attracts thousands of visitors and hundreds of boats. Since last year, smaller crowds have also gathered for Market Days, an assemblage of artists, crafters, produce vendors, and Bluemont Concert performances on the fourth Saturday of every month from May through September.
The laid-back lifestyle is epitomized by the golf carts that have proliferated since 2004, when Colonial Beach took advantage of a new Virginia law that enabled localities to make golf carts street-legal. “Golf carts have become the second car in this town, especially in warm weather,” says Bill Hendrix, who does “a little bit of everything” at Metro Golf Carts & Mid-Atlantic Scooters (see sidebar). Golf carts are permitted on all town streets—which like the carts themselves have a 25-mph speed limit—north of Route 205, where a golf-cart-illustrated sign warns them to proceed no further.
But Colonial Beach may not remain a backwater much longer. This spring, the Riverboat on the Potomac, on pilings over Maryland waters, has replaced the Riverboat destroyed by Isabel. The new Riverboat features off-track betting with simulcasts from up to twenty-four tracks, Maryland Keno—"When we went down, we were number one in the state for Keno,” says owner Penny Flanagan—a video arcade, a tiki room with live music, a restaurant, and an on-site liquor store open Sundays and after Virginia liquor stores close. Most important, this Riverboat is built to last. “It took two years and millions and millions of dollars, but it’s all concrete with a steel frame,” says Flanagan. “The towns people say they’ll come here when there’s a hurricane now.”
And as if to corroborate the real-estate-biz cliché about waterside property—they’re not making any more of it—Colonial Beach is enjoying the same surging property values as the rest of the Chesapeake area. “Prices started escalating about three or four years ago, with a lot of people from Northern Virginia buying second homes and pre-retirement homes,” says Bob Swink, owner of Colonial Beach Real Estate. “Lots selling for $8,000 back then now cost $100,000, and the most reasonable waterfront homes are up to $600,000. You can still get an affordable getaway for $150,000, but there’s nothing on the Point [near the water] under $200,000.”
The real estate boom has already transformed the town’s skyline, such as it is. In February, I “watched” assembly of the modular Potomac Renaissance Condominiums, a five-story structure just off the boardwalk that towers over the rest of the town center’s one- and two-story buildings. Other projects are Monroe Point, a residential and commercial develop-ment that will add some 252 town-houses and condos, and Potomac Crossing, a planned golf course-community that will have 913 homes.
“We’re a sleepy little resort that seems to have attracted a lot of folks from Northern Virginia,” says Colonial Beach Chamber of Commerce President Bill Hale. He recalls a very different Colonial Beach. “The demo-graphics have changed tremendously in my lifetime. I’m fifty-five, and the parents of half the kids I went to school with either directly or indirectly earned their living off the water; they were fishermen or crabbers or they had oyster-packing houses or worked on boats or in marinas.”
Full-timers and summer folk are all hoping (maybe against hope) that Colonial Beach survives the growth spurt with pre-boom flavor intact. “If they do all the development that is proposed, it may end up being horrifying,” says Sherryl Woods. “But if there’s a will on the town council to get a grip on this thing, I think it can still maintain some of the charm that actually brought all the people to begin with.”
Locals’ Guide to Colonial Beach
Muskrat Love Fine summer evenings begin at Muskrat Park, which hosts free outdoors concerts every Thursday evening from 6:30- 8 p.m. beginning in June. Grab a lawn chair, and stop by Village Shoppe for a pint of its famed chicken salad and roasted red pepper and corn salad to stuff in your picnic basket. For concert schedule, call 410-745-6073. Village Shoppe, 501 S. Talbot St. 410-745-9300.
Coffee, Tea, or EthylIn 2005, Jeff and Julie Malecha turned a midtown Esso station into The Espresso Station, a very popular place with picture windows on three sides and a full line of high-test coffee drinks, pastries, quiches, and soups du jour. 215 Washington Ave. 804-224-0045.
Alternative Realty Colonial Beach Real Estate occupies the site of the Westmoreland Sundry Store, a combination soda fountain/drug store/gift shop “where every kid who grew up in Colonial Beach had their first job,” says owner Bob Swink. Swink has turned the back rooms into an ad hoc museum of sundries like dinette booths, jukeboxes, a ’57 BSA motor-cycle, gambling paraphernalia, and a Beatles London double-decker bus telephone. Washington and Colonial avenues. 804-224-0001.
Alias “Columbia Beach” Library patrons insist that Columbia Beach, Md., a “fading resort town,” the setting of Robert Bausch’s new novel Out of Season, is a thinly veiled stand-in for Colonial Beach. In Bausch’s glum town, “what had once been a thriving and affluent resort area had…devolved into an abandoned stretch of barren beaches and decaying boardwalks.” .
Sweet Baby James Only a diminutive obelisk south of town marks the approximate birthplace of President James Monroe. But plans are afoot to build a replica of the farmhouse where the fifth president was born plus outbuildings and a visitor center—ideally in time to open as part of the Northern Neck’s 400th anniversary celebration in 2007.
When You Go
General Information: http://www.colonialbeach.org or 804-224-8145
STAY
The Bell House Bed and Breakfast a delicately preserved riverside Victorian once owned by Alexander Graham Bell, has four period-decorated guest rooms. Enjoy hearty breakfasts and the hors d’oeuvres hour every evening. 821 Irving Ave. 804-224-7000 or http://www.thebellhouse.com.
Riverview Inn, just off the boardwalk, boasts an art deco exterior, knotty pine guestrooms, and a private beach area. 25 Hawthorn St. 804-224-0006 or http://www.theriverviewinn.net.
Nightingales Motel and Marina on the quiet Monroe Bay side of the Point, offers five clean motel rooms and eight slips for transient mariners. 101 Monroe Bay Ave. 804-224-7956.
EAT
Newly reopened on a pier over the waters of Maryland, Riverboat on the Potomac specializes in prime rib, crab cakes, and a wildly popular crab dip appetizer. 301 Beach Terrace. 804-224-7055.
Inside the original 1930s oyster house at the Colonial Beach Yacht Center, Dockside Restaurant/ Blue Heron Pub combines a full-service seafood-based restaurant—with outdoor deck seating—and a British-style pub. End of the Point (1787 Castlewood Dr.). 804-224-8726 or http://www.dockside-blueheron.com.
High Tides on the Potomac is a spiffy new boardwalk-side spot for outdoor deck dining and, on weekends, a breakfast buffet and live entertainment at night. 205 Taylor St. 804-224-8433.
SHOP
Wishes and Dreams is a crowded consignment shop with a separate room for kitchenware. 500 Colonial Ave. 804-224-4750.
At Sherri’s Pottery Place/ Sheppard Gallery, you can buy art or learn how to make your own. 216 Dennison St. 804-224-8411.
Red Barn Flea Market and Auction is a huge space out on Hwy. 3 with weekends-only action. 3381 Kings Hwy. 804-224-2939.
PLAY
When in Colonial Beach, tool around town on a golf cart from Metro Golf Carts & Mid-Atlantic Scooters where two- to six-seaters range from $35-$75 for a half day, $55-$125 for a full day. 116 Washington Ave. 804-224-CART or http://www.loveyourwheels.com.
George Washington Birthplace National Monument lies on the Popes Creek Plantation where Washington was born and spent his first three-and-a-half years. Hwy 3. 804-224-1732 or http://www.nps.gov/gewa/.
Stratford Hall Plantation preserves the virtually self-contained antebellum community where Robert E. Lee was born. 485 Great House Rd., Stratford. 804-439-8038 or http://www.stratfordhall.org.
Ingleside Vineyards, one Virginia’s largest and most celebrated wineries (about fifteen minutes outside of Colonial Beach) offers tastings, tours, and an outdoor picnic area. 5872 Leedstown Rd. (Rte. 638 ), Oak Grove. 800-747-4645 or http://www.ipwine.com.
