In the summer of 1936, the people of Washington, D.C., were coming out of a long, hard economic depression. President Franklin Roosevelt was overseeing the rebuilding of the country's morale, and things were looking up. Swing music was in the air, and people wanted to resume the business of enjoying life.

Along the waterfront of our Nation's Capitol were steamboat wharves. The "Potomac" was offering day excursion cruises down the Potomac River to the popular amusement parks at Chapel Point, Md., and Colonial Beach, Va. After returning and docking at the Potomac River Line's wharf, she would again board passengers for a romantic "moonlit cruise." The setting sun cast its rosy light upon the Washington Monument, and the towering white obelisk reflected into the waters of the Washington Channel. Fun-loving Washingtonians left for a three-hour tour featuring dancing (to big-bands like Benny Goodman's or Paul Whiteman's) while passing landmarks such as Mount Vernon and Fort Washington. Around the same time in the early evening, the passenger steamer "District Of Columbia" would be preparing to cast off for her 12-hour run down the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay to Old Point Comfort and Norfolk, Va. The beautiful "District Of Columbia," of the Norfolk & Washington Line, boasted staterooms, a galley, dining saloon, and a social hall, and could also ferry automobiles on her cargo deck.

These were but two of the several passenger steamers that served the people of Washington, D.C. in the carefree peacetime years before World War II ... they were of an era we will never see again.