Maine Avenue Fish Market

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Fresh seafood laid out on one of several floating barge vendors.

The Maine Avenue Fish Market of Washington, D.C., also known as The Wharf or The Fish Wharf, is one of the few surviving open air seafood markets on the east coast. Located on the Southwest waterfront under the shadow of Interstate 395, it stands as a cultural relic popular with locals but unknown to many of the tourists who flock to the monuments and museums just five blocks north.

A multitude of fresh seafood is sold on floating barges that line the pier along Water Street. These barges are a tribute to the original system in which fishing boats would journey sixty miles back and forth from Colonial Beach, Virginia, where they would harvest the bay. In the 1960s, refrigerated trucks became more efficient and the "buy boats" were permanently docked and later replaced by the steel barges which exist today.

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