re-storying the potomac

The foundational story of our “Re-storying the Potomac” project is the history of the Fairfax Stone. For 250 years, this British colonial territorial boundary marker at the source of the Potomac River has presided as the dominant cultural destination in the region. RTS’s 125 acres of land is situated in the heart of ancestral Shawnee and Massawomeck Indigenous lands and is just a few thousand yards downriver from the start of the Potomac River—the site known as the Fairfax Stone. The project brings voice to the cultural paradigm shift and changing relationship with these monuments and convenes a living, breathing exhibit that tells the stories and experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people who were living on this land pre-colonization and post-colonization. 

In this inaugural project, we are deepening the “gallery experience” from a passive exhibition to an active interdisciplinary site that is home to curated workshops, educational seminars, short documentary vignettes, art installations, and multimedia historical motifs. Through the process of storytelling within multi-media creative platforms and strengthening the bonds of community and connection to the natural environment, individuals of urban and diverse backgrounds will have an opportunity to orient themselves and their lineages within Appalachia and its stories, and together weave a new cultural chapter with it. The Upper Potomac becomes not only a premier destination for recreation but a vibrant multicultural educational experience that reveals and places into the center of public dialogue how the birth of the Potomac River did not begin with Lord Fairfax.