A crowd gathered Tuesday in the frigid air along White’s Ferry on the banks of the Potomac River to push for the reopening of the ferry service that connects Montgomery and Loudoun counties.
“What do we want? When do we want it?” the crowd chanted.
The ferry service linked Montgomery County’s Poolesville community to Virginia’s Loudon County and advocates of reopening the service say it would benefit businesses and communities on both sides of the Potomac.
The group, which met in Poolesville, is hoping that a five-year impasse between landowners on both sides of the Potomac can come to an end and that the ferry service can start up again.
“The local businesses in Poolesville are really suffering, because this is one of our main arteries into our town, and it’s been cut off for five years,” Tom Kettler, with the Poolesville Area Chamber of Commerce, told WTOP.
Jim Brown, president of the Poolesville Town Commissioners, said the closure of the ferry five years ago has hurt the town.
“First of all, our commercial sector is down by 20% since the ferry closed,” he said. He compared the ferry closing to “having your left arm cut off.”
Brown organized the gathering to mark the “unhappy” anniversary of the ferry closure.
The service that once carried commuter and tourist traffic across the Potomac each day was shut down in 2020 after the former operator of the ferry and the landowner on the Virginia side, Libby Devlin of Rockland Farm, failed to settle a legal dispute over the landing site.
In 2021, Chuck Kuhn, a developer whose business is based in Virginia, bought the ferry and the landing site on the Maryland side of the Potomac. At the time, Kuhn stated he hoped to open the ferry service quickly, but what followed has been a protracted series of negotiations that have failed to reach a deal.
Tuesday’s event drew elected officials, including Montgomery County Council members Marilyn Balcombe, whose district includes White’s Ferry, and Council members Evan Glass and Andrew Friedson.
Glass and Friedson — who are both running for county executive — have been active in trying to negotiate a solution to the stalemate between the landowners on both sides of the river.
Friedson called the ferry “a critical piece of infrastructure” that tied two communities together and allowed commuters between Montgomery and Loudon Counties to avoid a long circular route to work, by hopping on the ferry.
Glass, who has chaired the county council’s Transportation Committee said he’s “heartened and optimistic” that some Virginia lawmakers in Richmond “are finally realizing that the state needs to step up” to try and break the impasse.
Link Hoewing, with the Fair Access Committee that’s lobbied to revive the ferry service, said since Montgomery County and the state of Maryland came up with a pot of money totaling $3 million, efforts to get an agreement have stalled.
Hoewing said he doesn’t see “a lot of light at the end of the tunnel” as the clock ticks on a July 1, 2026, deadline. The parties have until then, the start of a new fiscal year, to come to terms on a plan that satisfies both sides. “At the end of that, I don’t know what to tell you because we’ve essentially had five years of trying to get the two parties to work out an agreement,” Hoewing said.
Maryland State Del. David Frasier-Hidalgo said it’s been a long and frustrating five years. “I just, I’m done. I’m really frustrated,” by the inability of the two landowners to agree to an arrangement that would allow for the ferry to reopen. “They can’t seem to get along. It’s just like, like kids that just, they can’t—-I don’t know if it’s pride or money, or what it is,” Frasier-Hidalgo said.
The rally featured a playlet based on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and Hoewing played the part of one of the ghosts who visited Ebeneezer Scrooge. “Our message is that the public interest needs to be the center point of any discussion here. We know there are private parties, we know they have private lands, “but,” he said, “they should really be bending every way they can.
WTOP reached out to Devlin and Kuhn for comment.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
