South Cornerstone Galore

Word Masteress Emily gave me all the invitation I needed. We can go wherever you’d like, she volunteered, anywhere we go in the city will be new to me, so why don’t we tour around the places you’d like to see?

The South Cornerstone.

Whitney, Katie and I picked the North Cornerstone, back in April, as the most accessible/adventurous cornerstone to target first. With three to go, and knowing full well that East will be tricky and West threatens to be not that interesting, I suggested that Emily and I combine a tour of Old Town Alexandria with a second installment of the Cornerstone Chase. The only problem was that I wasn’t even sure that the South Cornerstone even exists anymore, the maps are a bit ambiguous. But the lady was game enough to agree.

The Old Town’s as delightfully bourgeoisie as a couple of young professionals could hope for. Blocks and blocks of old brick rowhouses gentrified into either charming restaurants, pricey shops or pretty nice places to live. At the river’s edge, we turned south, following a bike trail underneath a sketchy freeway bridge. Strange abandoned vans, mystery stinky trashy bags. Just because we were making jokes doesn’t mean that we didn’t pick up our pace.

The trail led to an underutilized, overgrown park. We walked, optimistically, as far as the park would allow. At the far corner, a historic lighthouse of sorts, trending towards dilapidated. A hunch and a hop over a fence. Emily looked confused.

And there she was, easing into the encroaching Potomac, a cornerstone, framed behind a not-often-used peephole in the seawall ten feet in front of the lighthouse. The South Cornerstone, the very first to be laid down in 1791. (Maybe. The authenticity of the present cornerstone is under dispute.)

Check.