Colchester, Virginia, The Lost Tobacco Port
Near Dc Northern Virginia, Virginia
Peter Wagener founded Colchester in seventeen fifty-three on the Occoquan River, laying out forty-two small lots for a tobacco shipping port. Hogsheads of tobacco were rolled down an ox road from inland farms and loaded onto ships for export. The town had taverns, a blacksmith, a tannery, and a ferry crossing to carry travelers along the main route through colonial Virginia.
It never grew large. Alexandria, with better road and later rail connections, steadily pulled commerce away. The river silted up. The tobacco trade declined. By the early nineteenth century, Colchester had effectively vanished, overtaken by its more advantageously placed rivals. Today almost nothing survives above ground. The site is a county park, and archaeologists have been working the area to recover what the river and the centuries buried. It is a ghost town that lost its race against Alexandria.
