Early history According to archaeologists' estimates, a succession of
indigenous peoples began to occupy the
Chesapeake and
Tidewater region about 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. Various
Algonquian-speaking peoples inhabited the lands in the
Potomac River drainage area since at least the early
14th century. In the summer of 1608, English settler
John Smith explored the Potomac River and came into contact with the
Patawomeck (loosely affiliated with the
Powhatan) and
Doeg tribes who lived on the
Virginia side, as well as on
Theodore Roosevelt Island, and the
Piscataway (also known as the Conoy), who resided on the
Maryland side. On this visit, Smith recorded the presence of a settlement called
Assaomeck near the south bank of what is now
Hunting Creek.
Colonial era On October 21, 1669, a
patent granted to Robert Howsing for transporting 120 people to the
Colony of Virginia; this land would eventually become Alexandria. Virginia's comprehensive
Tobacco Inspection Law of 1730 mandated that all tobacco grown in the colony must be brought to locally designated public warehouses for inspection before sale. One of the sites designated for a warehouse on the upper
Potomac River was at the mouth of
Hunting Creek. After the original site south of the creek was deemed "very inconvenient", the warehouse was built at West's Point to the north. This land had been given to John Alexander and Hugh West by John's father Robert Alexander. Robert's cousin, Philip Alexander, owned a estate to the south, which was bounded by Hunting Creek, Hooff's Run, the Potomac River, and the future Cameron Street. In 1742,
Fairfax County was split from
Prince William County. Local
planters and merchants, including
Thomas Fairfax and
Lawrence Washington, sought to establish a port for the new county. At the opening of Virginia's 1748–49 legislative session, the
House of Burgesses received a petition on November 1, 1748 that stated that the "inhabitants of Fairfax (Co.) praying that a town may be established at Hunting Creek Warehouse on Potowmack River". Lawrence's younger brother
George Washington, an aspiring surveyor, made a sketch of the shoreline touting the advantages of the tobacco warehouse site. Opponents of the warehouse site submitted a petition asking for the small settlement of Cameron along Hunting Creek to be selected instead. Both of these original petitions were rejected by the House of Burgesses. A "Public Vendue" (auction) was advertised for July, and the county surveyor laid out street lanes and town lots. The auction was conducted on July 13–14, 1749. The Fairfax County Court began meeting in Alexandria's Market Square in 1752. Though the alternative name did not find lasting success, some maps continued to label the town as Belhaven as late as 1783. 1779 also saw Virginia designate Alexandria as an international
port of entry with its own customs system. As the war came to a conclusion, Alexandria's export of flour and tobacco greatly increased. Trade with Europe, which was the destination of about half of the town's exports, was reestablished, while the West Indies served as another major customer of Alexandrian goods. A decline in tobacco production caused economic contraction in the late 1780s, but trade rapidly recovered in the 1790s. Alexandria was the dominant port along the Potomac by 1790 and was the seventh-largest port in the United States by 1796. That year, the first and southernmost
boundary marker of the capital was erected at Alexandria's
Jones Point. Ahead of Alexandria's expected cession, the Fairfax County Court moved to
Fairfax City in April 1800. Alexandria continued to operate under Virginia law until 1804, when Congress granted a new charter for the town that abolished the positions of recorder and alderman, expanded the common council to 16 members, and divided the town into four wards. taking on slaves on the city's Potomac waterfront as part of the
coastwise slave trade. Alexandria's economy stagnated with a decline in Northern Virginia's agricultural output, and the
slave trade became increasingly important as Alexandria sought to supply the
cotton industry of the
Deep South. Even as "observers perceived the downward trend of Alexandria's relative economic power", Alexandria grew to become the country's largest center of slave trading by the 1830s. Alexandria was home to the
Franklin & Armfield Slave Market, one of the largest slave trading companies in the United States. By the 1830s, they were sending more than 1,000 slaves annually from Alexandria to their
Natchez, Mississippi,
New Orleans, and later
Texas markets to help meet the demand for slaves in Mississippi and nearby states. Later owned by Price, Birch & Co., the
slave pen became a jail under
Union occupation. As discontent with the District of Columbia grew south of the Potomac, a movement emerged that called for Alexandria County to be
retroceded to Virginia. Amidst economic troubles, many in Alexandria felt neglected by Congress, which Alexandrians had no say in due to the disenfranchisement of District residents. As the
Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Canal spurred development on the north side of the Potomac, Alexandria invested heavily into
its own canal to provide a direct connection to the C&O Canal's terminus at
Georgetown, which failed to provide the desired economic benefits despite the steep cost. Meanwhile, Georgetown's port emerged as a major rival to Alexandria's. Alexandria was also ineligible to host federal buildings under the 1791 amendment to the Residence Act. On July 9, 1846, Congress agreed to hold a referendum in Alexandria County on the issue of retrocession. On September 1 and 2, 763 voted in favor of retrocession while 222 opposed it. President
James K. Polk accepted the results on September 7, and Virginia formally assumed control over the land on March 13, 1847. Alexandria was re-chartered as a city in 1852. with
Fort Ellsworth visible on the hill in the center background Alexandria was the subject of the longest Union occupation of any settlement in the country during the Civil War, remaining under military control for the duration of the conflict. The city became a major logistical hub for the
Army of the Potomac, with many buildings seized for supply depots and medical centers. There were five military prisons in the city, the largest being the
Washington Street Military Prison. The war caused a steep increase in the city's black population due to the arrival of thousands of escaped slaves, designated "
contrabands" to avoid returning them to their masters. The
Restored Government of Virginia, the Unionist rival to Virginia's secessionist government, was headquartered in Alexandria from August 1863 until May 1865 after its previous stronghold became the new state of
West Virginia. As
Reconstruction began, Alexandria's population was roughly half black. With local Unionists and
Republican carpetbaggers helping shape policy under military protection, these black residents experienced a brief period of enhanced rights. In 1869, Virginia was readmitted to the union with a new state constitution. Federal troops withdrew from the city on January 26, 1870, restoring civilian control. Alexandria subsequently became an
independent city distinct from Alexandria County, as Virginia's new constitution stipulated that any city of at least 10,000 people would be independent. The city's black population, aligned with the local Republicans, gained the right to vote with the passage of the
Fifteenth Amendment. The
Conservative Party emerged as a serious rival to the Republicans, and the Conservative candidate won a narrow victory in the first post-war mayoral race on May 26, 1970. Nonetheless, that election also saw the first black man elected to city council, and a Republican was elected mayor in 1872. By the mid-1870s, however, the
Democratic Party came to dominate city politics, pushing the Republicans and their African American supporters to the political fringe. The implementation of
Jim Crow laws reversed many of the gains that black people had made after the war.
20th century memorial on
George Washington Memorial Parkway, The early 1900s were a prosperous time for Alexandria's manufacturing industry, with
Lynchburg being the only city in Virginia to experience a greater increase in production. Glass was among the city's most important products, with the Virginia Glass Company, the Alexandria Glass Company,
Old Dominion Glass Company, and the Belle Pre Bottle Company emerging as prominent businesses in this sector. Other key products included fertilizer, beer, and leather. In 1915, Alexandria annexed territory west of the city from Fairfax and Alexandria Counties, including the neighborhoods of
Rosemont,
Eisenhower East and Carlyle, and Shuter's Hill. Shuter's Hill soon hosted the
George Washington National Masonic Memorial, which opened in 1932. America's need for vessels in
World War I led to the establishment of the Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation in 1918, a massive shipyard at Jones Point. President
Woodrow Wilson visited the shipyard on May 30, 1918 to drive the first rivet into the yard's first keel to be laid down, the . While the yard was expected to employ thousands of men for the construction of a dozen ships, the war ended before any could be deployed. The shipyard was largely abandoned in the early 1920s after legal investigations were launched into its owner, businessman and fraudster
Charles W. Morse. , c. 1917 In 1930, Alexandria doubled in size by again annexing portions of Fairfax and Alexandria Counties, the latter of which had changed its name to Arlington County in 1920. The annexed land was bounded by the
Little River Turnpike/Duke Street to the south,
Quaker Lane to the west, and
Four Mile Run to the north. On August 28, 1939, African-American lawyer and Alexandria native
Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized
a sit-in at the city's library to protest its policy of racial segregation. This was among the first
sit-in protests against segregation in the United States, establishing what would become a key tactic of the
civil rights movement. The Robert Robinson Library, intended for the city's black population, opened the following year. The new library was converted into the
Alexandria Black History Museum after desegregation.
Urban renewal in Alexandria began in 1939 as the city sought to carry out the
slum clearance provisions of the
Housing Act of 1937. As part of this policy, multiple black or mixed-race neighborhoods were demolished and replaced with segregated public housing developments. In 1946, part of Alexandria's "
Old Town" core was designated the
Alexandria Historic District, the third
historic district in the United States. Many buildings in this district were demolished in the 1960s as part of the urban renewal effort, leading to the emergence of a strong
historic preservation movement that called for the protection of the city's old structures. Alexandria's final urban renewal project was completed in 1984. The
New Deal and
World War II brought large numbers of new residents to Alexandria as the federal government expanded. After the war, the city's old maritime and industrial economy faltered as the rise of large
container ships rendered small river ports obsolete. As Alexandria's manufacturing base largely
died out, the city sought to replace it with tourism, redeveloping its previously industrial waterfront into a recreational hub. Though Alexandria did attract some corporate offices, the city largely became a residential community for government employees. In October 1950, Alexandria filed a lawsuit to annex 7.65 square miles of Fairfax County, stating that the city needed room to expand and would be better equipped to provide utilities for the land's residents than the county. The suit was approved by the
Supreme Court of Virginia on December 3, 1951. When the annexation took effect on January 1, 1952, Alexandria's land area again roughly doubled. The annexed territory was the site of the
Virginia Theological Seminary, established in 1823 by
William Holland Wilmer,
Francis Scott Key, and other prominent
Episcopalians. The land was "sparsely populated", however, hosting only 11,000 residents. On December 28, 1961, the original
Woodrow Wilson Bridge opened as part of the
Capital Beltway, connecting Alexandria with
Oxon Hill, Maryland. On July 1, 1969, Alexandria agreed to have the proposed
Washington Metro expand into the city. After extensive delays, the
King Street,
Braddock Road, and
Eisenhower Avenue stations opened as Metro's first three stations in Alexandria on December 17, 1983. To reduce its reliance on the
Metrobus network, Alexandria opened its own bus transit system,
DASH, on March 12, 1984. In 1973, Nora Lamborne and Beverly Beidler became the first women elected to the city council. In 1991, Patricia Ticer became the first woman to be elected mayor. The site was an unsuccessful contender for a new
Washington Redskins stadium in 1992. A
strip mall opened in Potomac Yard in 1997, which was intended to only last for 20 years until the mixed-use housing and office development could materialize.
21st century The city repealed its policy of naming new north-south streets for Confederate officers in 2014. In 2019, the name of
U.S. Route 1 in Alexandria was changed from
Jefferson Davis Highway to Richmond Highway. Amidst the
George Floyd protests, support grew for
renaming Alexandria's T. C. Williams High School and Matthew Maury Elementary School, which were named for a segregationist school superintendent and
a Confederate pro-slavery activist, respectively. The school board unanimously voted to rename both schools in November 2020, with the high school becoming Alexandria City High School and Maury Elementary becoming
Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School on July 1, 2021. In 2023, Mayor
Justin Wilson proposed renaming streets named for Confederates, beginning a phased process by which three to five streets would be renamed per phase. In December of that year, Virginia Governor
Glenn Youngkin and
Monumental Sports & Entertainment founder
Ted Leonsis announced plans to develop a 70-acre area in Potomac Yard that would have featured a new arena for the
Washington Capitals and
Washington Wizards. The proposal failed in March 2024 after it did not advance in the
Virginia General Assembly, with Monumental instead keeping its teams in Washington, D.C. An "Innovation Campus" for
Virginia Tech opened at Potomac Yard in January 2025. ==Geography==