White’s Ferry owner wants to sell to Montgomery County
POOLESVILLE, M.d. (FOX 5 DC) - The hope of seeing the historic White's Ferry up and running this spring is quickly fading as the latest sale proposal was rejected.
After running for more than two centuries, White's Ferry has been closed since December 2020 over a land dispute. A Virginia judge ruled that the ferry was trespassing on Virginia land owned by Rockland Farms.
Ferry owner Chuck Kuhn offered $1.1 million to buy the Virginia land with funds from Montgomery County, Loudoun County and former ferry owner Herb Brown.
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Kuhn says it's more than the land appraises for, but Libby Devlin with Rockland Farms says that's not the point.
She says the reason they turned down the offer is that Rockland will not accept a flat fee. They want a volume-based fee for the amount of traffic encroaching on the land.
Kuhn says now he has run out of options and wants to sell the ferry to Montgomery County to get it running again. He says he wants Montgomery County to invoke eminent domain and acquire the Virginia landing site.
Eminent domain is when the government takes your property for public use and pays you for it. It can take years in the courts, but if Montgomery County owns the ferry and the Maryland land, it would not need to exercise eminent domain.
"We had a goal to keep this ferry in the river and get this means of transportation up and running for the community. So if we could sell the ferry to the county, and they could get it open, more power to them and that would be great for the community. That's our primary goal," says Kuhn.
Montgomery County won't commit on whether they plan to make an offer for the ferry. They say all options are still on the table, and they hope to get it settled quickly.