Montgomery County officials are acquiring the Maryland side of White’s Ferry in hopes of resuming service to the other side of the Potomac in Loudoun County.
Chuck Kuhn, owner of the land and the ferry on the Maryland side, is donating the operation to Montgomery County, and the county is buying the land from him.
“After this agreement [is] signed for the purchase and sale and the donation of the ferry assets … we expect to have the property in the county’s possession in the next two months or so,” Montgomery County Department of Transportation Director Chris Conklin said at a Friday press conference.
After that, Mr. Conklin said, the county will get the ferry boat out of the Potomac River, assess what condition it’s in and make necessary repairs to get it back in operation. He also said the county does not plan to change the way the ferry operates if it resumes going on the water.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said that “we will hire people to operate the ferry. … If it winds up in the [Montgomery County] Revenue Authority … they will hire people to come in and run the ferry.”
County officials did not say how much Mr. Kuhn’s land will cost. Unnamed sources familiar with the deal told Washington’s WTOP-FM that the county is buying the land below the appraisal price.
The ferry service, which originally started in the late 18th century, shut down in late 2020 after it was found that the ferry could not legally land at Rockland Farm on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
Mr. Kuhn has repeatedly sought deals to reopen the ferry, including trying to sell the operation to Montgomery County in 2023, offering to donate the operation to the county in 2024, trying to buy the Loudoun landing site and offering to donate the operation to Loudoun County in 2025, per the White’s Ferry website.
Libby Devlin, a co-owner of Rockland Farm, which controls the Loudoun County landing site and the land around it, told WTOP that she was unaware of the deal between Mr. Kuhn and Montgomery County and was not invited to the press conference.
Mr. Conklin said at the press conference that “our colleagues in Loudoun County know what we’re doing and we hope that they see their way to take the actions they need to take so that we can restart the ferry.”
Loudoun County spokesperson Glen Barbour told the Loudoun Times-Mirror that “Loudoun County remains interested in a commercially reasonable price for the land in Virginia that would enable the two counties to resume operations of the ferry.”
