(No, this isn’t the damn North Cardinal Stone. I was starting to get irritated about the whole thing- that and the NW5 Stone being stuck hundreds of feet behind the stupid fence at the Reservoir. You can forgive me for thinking it was, though, right?)

OK: so here is where things get interesting. It’s about time, right? Trust me, you are going to like it. You will get a chance to meet the fearless Argo, hunt for Nazis with the Big Blonde, and generally have some actual rip-roaring adventures. And no kidding, the hunt for the Stones of the NE and SE quadrants of the Boundary Stones had- and will have- some moments of high drama and low comedy.

I thought I felt a burst of accomplishment in visiting- or at seeing nine Stones of the ten stones of the Northwest quadrant of the District. After visiting NW9, I retraced my steps and parked the car near Sidley Hospital, thinking that an approach through the woods going north, up the slope, might yield the rumored person-sized hole in the fence. I got just as disoriented as before, could not find any god-damn hole in the fence, and really began to question what the hell I was doing intending to trespass on Federal property in a time of heightened Homeland Security alert.

I drove home bummed and questioning whether this particular obsession was worth it. Then I got involved in the information operations campaign against the Taliban, and it was a few weeks until I had a chance to go back and start with the North Stone.

I think I mentioned that the Cardinal Stones of North, South, East and West were intended to be a little grander in size than the common mile markers, and that is why I got fooled. This quest started so long ago that it was before hand-held GPS devices were in common usage, or better said, the coordinates were not posted anywhere and I didn’t own a device anyway.

I recommend approaching from the North, since it is an easy shot around the Beltway to the Georgia Avenue exit.

There is a lot to see in addition to the Stones, since history around here could have been radically different than it is. Let me break it down quickly. In the summer of 1864, General Grant had Bobby Lee’s boys in a stranglehold down at Petersburg, VA, the city that guarded the Confederate capital of Richmond. Lee was desperate but not down- he dispatched gruff General Jubal Early on a daring and desperate incursion into Maryland to attack Washington from the north. He took 20,000 troops with him to do the job, since Confederate spies reported that the no-nonsense Grant had stripped the troops from the massive system of forts and redoubts around Washington to have the manpower to finish off the Army of Northern Virginia once and for all.

Early took off on June 12, and by July 9, he was at Frederick, Maryland. He stopped long enough to extort $200 grand in exchange for not burning the city, and then hit a speed-bump in the person of Union General Lew Wallace, the goat of Shiloh, who slowed him just long enough at the Battle of Monocacy Creek to save Washington.

Not surprisingly, the War Department assumed the deer-in-the-headlights look, and Grant had to dispatch troops from the siege lines in a pell-mell dash from Petersburg to beat Early’s men to the denuded forts.

(Fort Stevens Plaque Commemorating Lincoln’s 12 Jul 1864 Visit to the Fort, becoming the only sitting president to come under hostile fire (by military forces, anyway)).

The 25th New York arrived just in time to man the defenses. Early gave up his plan to take the city, but decided to fight anyway. The fruits of that battle are at the two cemeteries on Georgia Avenue.

(This monument is in the graveyard of Grace Episcopal Church at 1607 Grace Church Rd, Silver Spring).

There is an impressive monument to mark the mass grave of 17 Confederate soldiers who died in the battle of Fort Stevens in July of 1864. They were buried in shallow graves on several Silver Spring farms nearby after the battle. A few years after peace broke out, the pastor of the Church (and Confederate veteran) was able to locate seventeen of them and had them disinterred and moved to the church cemetery.

They were buried in a bi-partisan fashion in a plot donated by Montgomery Blair, a parishioner who had been Lincoln’s postmaster and Dread Scott’s Attorney. Georgia Avenue was later widened to cover the trolley right of way where the bodies were buried, so they were moved yet again. Time marches on, and the way things are going these days you might want to see the monument while it is still here.

Also on Georgia Avenue, two blocks south of what used to be Walter Reed Army Medical Center, is another tiny cemetery. It is in the Brightwood neighborhood now, which was farmland back then. At the time of the great events thereabout, it was located well north of the city of Washington. It is not a mass grave, but real miniature National Cemetery. General Montgomery Meigs, one of the most amazing people you probably have never heard of is central to the story of the place, and Monty is going to show up another few times in this little adventure. He took it upon himself to memorialize the Union Dead of the battle, and the little house with the mansard roof became the prototype for superintendents of National Cemeteries all over the nation.

This particular patch of hallowed ground is a little more than an acre in size and is well worth a visit.

The Battle of Fort Stevens was a particularly fierce fight and the only action of the Civil War actually fought within the District of Columbia. It too is worth a visit, as it a trip to the ramparts of the Fort itself, located in a quiet neighborhood at 13th and Quackenbos Streets.

Before the Army gave up the sprawling hospital complex, there were some cannon balls embedded in trees that showed the forward Rebel positions. I have not been back to check if they are still there.

It is all kind of surreal.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to do much more than look that those things and find the North Stone, except I screwed up.

I mentioned that the Cardinal Stones were a little bit larger than the milestones, so I was not surprised to see that the North Stone was a tall dark stone in the traffic circle where 16th Street hits Eastern Avenue and the Colesville Road. I took a picture and decided to call it a day.

That would have been fine, except that wasn’t the Stone. It was a decoy, a ploy obviously fabricated by then-Mayor Anthony Williams, the one who wore the preppie bow ties, whose name was featured prominently on a welcome sign nearby.

You can imagine how pissed off I was to learn that it wasn’t the Stone at all, and I had to go back.

This is the real North Stone. It is located immediately south of East-West Highway in the edge of the trees, just west of the townhouses at Chevy Chase Crest condominium community, near 1850 East-West Highway. Dammit.

The other one looks much more impressive.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303