Wash Woods, Virginia

Wash Woods was an unincorporated town located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in Princess Anne County in the extreme southeastern corner of Virginia. The site is currently located within False Cape State Park in the independent city of Virginia Beach.

Virginia's "False Cape" got its name because its land mass resembled Cape Henry from the ocean. This false impression of Cape Henry, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay about 20 miles (30 km) to the north, lured navigators of ships and boats into the treacherous shallow waters, where they often ran aground.

According to popular legend, the community was developed by survivors of a shipwreck in the 16th or early 17th century. The village’s church and other structures were built using cypress wood that washed ashore from a shipwreck. Around the turn of the 20th century, the area was still inhabited. Wash Woods was home to a United States Coast Guard lifesaving station, a grocery store, two churches, and a school. Three hundred people once lived there, working as fishermen, farmers, hunting guides and manning lifeboats.

Ironically, located along the section of ocean known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, the tiny town of Wash Woods was subject to the same severe weather conditions which had brought the lumber to shore to build it. By the 1920s the sea had inundated the narrow sliver of sand so often that townspeople began to abandon the place. Everyone was gone by the 1930s. After the townsfolk abandoned Wash Woods, for a number of years, it became a haven for a number of prestigious hunt clubs, which took advantage of the area's abundant waterfowl. Today, the area is a Virginia state park, adjoining the federally managed Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

There is still a small cemetery adjacent to the ruins of the Wash Woods church. Unfortunately, vandals demolished the steeple circa 1980. Look for the grave markers of a pair of brothers who killed each other while hunting when a duck flew between their hunting blinds. False Cape State Park's Wash Woods Environmental Education Center is a converted clubhouse used in the past by hunters.

In the mid-1950s, Wash Woods remained a voting precinct consisting of only 13 registered voters. On most election days, all of the 13 voters would meet just after midnight and vote. Under Virginia law at that time, when all the voters of any given precinct had voted in person, the precinct could close and report the results of the voting. Since the state at that time was basically a Democratic state under the guidance of U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., all of the registered voters of the precinct always voted for the Democratic ticket. The results of the voting at the Wash Woods precinct was reported soon after midnight as a psychological device to promote the Democratic party, whether in local elections or in national elections. In the mid-1960s, during a local election, a group of local Democrats who opposed the local branch of the Byrd organization arranged for two voters to register to vote at the Wash Woods precinct. Those two voters then submitted their votes by mail. Under Virginia law, persons who had voted by mail had a right to report to their precinct on election day, pick up their previously-mailed ballots, and then vote in person. Because these two voters had submitted their ballots by mail, the precinct could not close immediately after midnight on that election day and the psychological advantage previously offered by the precinct was lost. Immediately after that election, elected local officials representing the local branch of the Byrd organization dissolved the Wash Woods precinct and transferred the registered voters of that precinct to a larger adjoining precinct.

See also

• False Cape State Park
• Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge
• Lost counties, cities, and towns of Virginia

External links

• Waterland Farm website with photos of remains of Wash Woods
• False Cape State Park
• Museumsusa.org, False Cape State Park web page