Wash Woods, Virginia

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Wash Woods was a now extinct unincorporated town located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in the extreme southeastern corner of Virginia in the current 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. [1]. 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. [2]

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. [3] False Cape State Park's Wash Woods Environmental Education Center is a converted clubhouse used in the past by hunters. [4]