4940 Canal Rd. is only a few miles away from a major airport, the center of power in the free world and right square in the middle of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. Yet, once there, you’d never know it.
Once you transit a short, narrow tunnel built in 1828, you arrive in the 1850s, the era that Fletcher’s Cove Boathouse was built.
“Coming through the tunnel is like coming through a time machine,” says Dan Ward, assistant manager of Fletcher’s Cove Boathouse on the Potomac River in Washington DC.
The world that lives at the end of the tunnel is slow, methodical and still. Ward calls it his spiritual center.
“We’ve got traffic on both sides, and the airplanes and the capital’s five miles away and here we are,” says Ray Fletcher, whose great great grandfather Joseph founded the boathouse in the 1850s.
The little cove called Fletcher’s is a hidden oasis in the power grabbing, money driven city of commerce named Washington DC. For this reason, generations of Washingtonians, tourists and even heads of state, have visited the cove.
Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy are just a very few of the notables that have relaxed at Fletcher’s.
Ward says, “Many presidents have come here way back to Andrew Jackson. From what evidence I could glean from the archives he fished here back in 1828.”
Ward also reports that Jackson caught himself a rockfish (called a large striped bass back then). In addition to president’s and other congressional leaders, Fletcher rents boats to every other type of occupation. Federal circuit judges often come out to fish before they go to court.
“I hope it puts them in a better mood when they get behind the bench,” Ward says.
Besides judges, Fletcher’s Cove is a favorite of lobbyists also. Fletcher sees lobbyists wanting to get away from the bureaucracy. They come to the cove to escape the driven competition and get centered for a season before heading back into the boxing ring of top tier politics.
When Fletcher’s first opened, the day rate to rent a 14-foot wooden rowboat was 25 cents. Now it’s $22. But that is about the only thing that has changed about Fletcher’s. As you park your car and walk up the wooden planks leading to the bait house, it doesn’t take much imagination to think you could turn around and see Andy Jackson pulling in another rockfish on the river behind you.
Fletchers Boat House is a bike and boat rental facility located on the Potomac River and the C&O Canal between Chain and Key Bridges only minutes from downtown Washington DC.
Fletchers Boat House has been in this location since the 1850s. After 145 years of business, the fourth generation of Fletchers retired in 2004 and Guest Services Incorporated, a National Park Service concessionaire, assumed responsibility for the operation of the concessions. The area surrounding the boat house was then officially named - Fletchers Cove, though most people still call it Fletcher's Boat House.
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