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 group, which met in Poolesville, Maryland, 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.”
It’s not just an economic driver between, say, Poolsville and Leesburg, according to Susan Baker, a Gaithersburg resident. She said it’s also about a sense of place.
“Ever since I was a kid, and that was a long time ago. We used to travel across on the ferry, and as years went by, I did jobs in Leesburg and would drive over on the ferry,” Baker said.
The lack of agreement between Virginia landowner Libby Devlin and Chuck Kuhn, who owns the ferry and land on the Maryland side, has kept the service from operating.
County and state funds totaling $3 million were offered to help the two parties come to an agreement, but there has been no progress.
Now, the two sides only have until July 1, 2026, to work out their differences, when the offer for funding expires.
“So at the end of that, I don’t know what to tell you, because we essentially had five years of trying to get the two parties to work on an agreement,” Brown said.
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