A note to cachers: the following lands and homes are all private residences. Please do not enter their property or disturb them in any way. All locations can be seen from city streets.
The Anchorage
On Red Hill there was once a small cottage—long since gone—that was the setting for a famous Alexandria ghost story. Built around the middle of the 18th Century, it was the home of a sea captain and his young wife who fittingly called it “the Anchorage.” The Potomac River was some distance away but vessels anchored there could be seen from the hilltop cottage. When the captain went down to his ship, his wife would watch his departure; then later, after it was back in the harbor, she would keep a vigil until he left the ship for his return home to her. From one voyage, however, there was no return. Brokenhearted and unable to endure life without her husband, the young wife shot herself out in the garden.
The garden is no longer there, swallowed up amid new houses built in the 1950s. But traces of it may still be seen along Hanson Lane (accessible from Ruffner Road at the top of the hill): a hedge, a gnarled old apple tree that alone remains of a once handsome orchard, the steep bank where she watched in vain for her loved one.
Civil War Hospital
Across the road from the cache stands a lovely white house that is considered to be one of the oldest in the area. Its driveway is located at 305 West Braddock Road, though it faces Orchard Street on a dead-end block.
The original part reportedly was built about 1810 on acreage that may have extended to the Potomac River. During the Civil War, like so many others in occupied Alexandria, it is believed to have been pressed into service as a hospital and a second floor bedroom used for surgery because of its good northern light. The fact that the wood flooring in that room runs from side to side rather than from front to back, as in the rest of the house, perhaps bears out the theory that the original floor was so blood-stained it couldn't be cleaned.
Residents of Red Hill have “felt” the presence of another ghost in the area—perhaps that of a soldier who died in the operating room of this house. Strange sounds and occasional apparitions reported in years past are ominous and frightening, unlike the sea captain’s young wife.
The Log Cabin
In 1997, neighborhood residents created a new interest with the reconstruction of a log cabin on their property at 1509 Stonewall Road (Stonewall Road intersects Braddock about halfway down the hill). The hand-hewn chestnut log cabin with original stone chimney was moved from Rye Cove, an old community deep in the mountains of southwest Virginia. The first story of the cabin was built about 1850 and the second story and another porch sometime in the early years after the Civil War. The current owners reconstructed the cabin on his property using the original flooring, paneling, hardware and trim. And now, as he says, "The cabin from Rye Cove is our country house in the city—no traffic, no commute."