Herbert Brown: Why White’s Ferry closed
Loudon Times-Mirror (November 30, 2021) - In 2003, Hurricane Isabel destroyed a wooden wall on the Virginia landing. Ed Brown, my father and the previous owner of White’s Ferry, replaced it with a concrete retaining wall, believing it was within the public right-of-way.
Rockland Farm disputed the wall placement. A lawsuit was brought by Rockland Farm, and in 2020 a judge ruled there was no public landing in Virginia (despite the 1871 condemnation which formalized a ferry landing on the Virginia shore). The judge ruled that the retaining wall was on their property and awarded them $102,175, which all agreed was the cost to tear it down. This judgement was paid in December of 2020.
For over 200 hundred years, the Ferry had operated at that site since it was considered public land. The only agreement between White’s Ferry and Rockland Farm happened in 1952 and was for a pole and anchor in the nearby pasture to support an overhead cable.
That changed in 2020 with the judgement. Rockland Farm’s owners Peter Brown and his sister Libby Devlin sent us a revocable license agreement demanding $18,000 a month for the use of the landing. At that time, the boat operation was not generating that amount per month.