MAR 27, 2:14 PM

Owner Of Shuttered White’s Ferry Says He’ll Have To Sell After Offer For Disputed Landing Rebuffed

Martin Austermuhle



For two centuries White’s Ferry crossed the Potomac River between Poolesville, Maryland and Leesburg, Virginia, but it shut down suddenly at the end of 2020 over a dispute involving the landing on the Virginia side of the river.
Tyrone Turner / DCist/WAMU

Chuck Kuhn, the Virginia businessman who bought the shuttered White’s Ferry two years ago and promised to get it running again, now says that he’s going to have to sell the operation altogether — casting further doubt on whether the historic ferry will ever cross the Potomac River again.

Kuhn said in a press release on Monday morning that efforts to buy the privately owned landing on the Virginia side of the river had been rebuffed by its owners; it was a dispute over access to the landing that prompted the ferry to cease operations suddenly in late 2020. Kuhn, who bought the ferry shortly after it was shuttered, says a coalition of interested parties — including the governments of Montgomery County, Maryland and Loudoun County, Virginia — had offered $1.1 million for the 1.4-acre landing in January.

“We are grateful for the significant and good faith efforts of our local and state governments on both sides of the Potomac to help us reopen White’s Ferry. It’s unfathomable that one family is standing in the way of people’s livelihoods. We have run out of options and will now seek to sell the ferry land and operations to Montgomery County so it can work to invoke eminent domain and acquire the Virginia landing site. This is not what we had hoped, but we understand the importance of White’s Ferry to the region’s economy — and the ferry needs to get moving again,” said Kuhn, the owner of Sterling-based JK Moving Services and a history buff who has used his wealth to preserve a number of local sites.

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White’s Ferry started operations in 1786, and was at the time one of dozens of ferries that crossed the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. Officials and activists in the western portion of Montgomery County recently told DCist/WAMU that the historic ferry was an important part of the area’s economy, and that businesses have seen declines in revenue since it closed just over two years ago.