Great Falls of the Potomac River

The Potomac river is navigable a short distance beyond Georgetown and is blocked for a number of miles by the Great Falls.  There are parks on the VA & MD sides of the river by the falls and it is a popular destination during the spring time when the river is running high.  I recently purchased a device to transfer my old film, negatives and slides to a digital format.  These are a few of the pictures taken in March, 1982 from the MD side.

  The falls are beautiful and interesting to see, but they are deadly with as many as 4-5 people falling in and drowning some years.  It is a favorite place for high school kids to sneak off to during the school time and it seems like one of them loses their life each year.

The flood water level has risen about 25 ft higher than the rocks on the side of the river.  I sure would not want to be in the area when a major flood is occurring, even though it would be exciting.

I used to fish the Potomac river above the Falls but was careful to not get too close.  The river is shallow and rocky above and easily wadeable.  Nice place for small mouth bass fishing and they had cleaned up the river by then and the fish were fine to eat.  We also used to catch crappie, catfish, large mouth bass and panfish in the river.  It was a rough place to take a boat unless you had the patience to repair shear pins all day long.