After $1.5 million deal, Montgomery County looks to Virginia to reopen White’s Ferry

Montgomery County has agreed to pay $1.5 million to acquire the Maryland landing and boat operations at White’s Ferry in hopes that public ownership will help reopen the Potomac River shuttle.

Local officials announced the deal during a press event Friday in Dickerson and expressed hope that they could reach an agreement to restart the shuttle with the landowner on the Virginia side of the river or with local officials there.

Before closing, the ferry carried bikers, pedestrians and roughly 600 to 800 vehicles per day across the river.

After years of stalled negotiations, many on the Maryland side say Virginia should use eminent domain to acquire private land and allow the ferry back across the river.

Both commuters and businesspeople have lamented the loss of the ferry, a vital passage for Poolesville and other communities along the river.

The ferry closed in 2020 during a legal dispute over landing rights involving property owners on each side of the river.

Virginia-based business executive Chuck Kuhn later acquired the Dickerson landing and the ferry operations. But Kuhn said he’d been unable to reach a deal with his counterparts in Loudoun County: Libby Devlin and Peter Brown, siblings who own Rockland Farm.

Kuhn has donated to Montgomery County the ferry operations — including boats and business assets — which appraisers valued at more than $7 million.

And for $1.5 million, he sold the county 2.5 acres of riverfront land, the White’s Ferry Grill, the ferry ramp and boat launch, storage buildings and other structures. Kuhn said the amount was “greatly reduced” from its appraised price.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said at Friday’s event that negotiations over White’s Ferry have been unnecessarily difficult, though not because of anyone in Maryland.

“It’s not because we didn’t have partners who wanted to get this job done. We had a little obstacle on the other side of the river,” he said.

Brown, of Rockland Farm, declined to comment.

Chris Conklin, Montgomery County’s transportation director and lead negotiator over White’s Ferry, said the county expects to officially own the ferry landing within the next two months, following due diligence reviews.

He said the county will then pull the ferries out of the river, where they have idled for the last six years, to assess their condition and pay for any needed repairs. His hope is that the ferry will be ready to carry cars across the Potomac the day that Rockland Farm and government officials in Virginia reach a deal.

Loudoun County spokesperson Glen Barbour said the county is interested in purchasing Rockland Farm land, but he said the county is looking for a “commercially reasonable price.”

Virginia Department of Transportation spokesperson Amy Friedenberger said in early July that while the department hadn’t been “engaged in recent developments regarding the ferry’s reopening, we continue to monitor this situation and have an ear open to solutions.”

In an interview following Friday’s event, Kuhn advocated that officials in Virginia use eminent domain to acquire the landing in Loudoun County.

Kuhn said officials had been reluctant to take this action while he owned the Maryland landing, as doing so would have benefited a privately owned business.

He said this was one of the reasons he and his wife, Stacy, pursued an agreement with Montgomery County.

“We didn’t care about ownership. We cared about getting the ferry open,” Kuhn said.

This story has been updated.