Now, Georgetown's "Mile 0" is the weekly destination for thousands of tourists, joggers, bikers, and couples seeking a short respite from Capital fever -- the fast-paced of life of modern Washington.

Georgetown also is the beginning and end for hiking and bike trips along the C&O towpath. Each year hundreds of Boy Scouts, teenagers, families, and friends roller-blade or bike down the Crescent Trail from Bethesda for lunch by the river, or trek in with dusty backpacks from Cumberland, Maryland, 184 miles away.

The Potomac River is an estuary, an arm of the Chesepeake Bay, and the river was deep enough for 18th and 19th Century shipt to navigate as far north as Georgetown. The end of the estuary and the "beginning" of the fresh-water river determined the location of Georgetown in the 1600s, and later the Nation's capital.