A Snapshot in Time: Loch Haven in 1946

A Snapshot in Time

by Terri Weddell

Loch Haven Newsletter May 2014

Try to imagine Loch Haven 68 years ago; it was the first Easter Sunday after the war ended. Dick Edwards and a friend drove down from D.C. on a sunny day in response to a newspaper advertisement for Lots for sale at “Loch Haven Beach on the beautiful South River with a lovely view of the Chesapeake Bay.” 

The lots started at $750 and advertised “convenient terms, children’s paradise, harbor facilities, close to Washington and the special privilege of every lot owner having use of approximately two miles of shore front and facilities.” Another ad states “Seeing is Believing – For family fun this summer bring your whole family and bathe in picturesque South River. Play on the white sand beach. Do some fishing. Dock your boat at the wharf and by all means meet and talk with your neighbors.”  Now it’s starting to sound familiar.

Dick Edwards, one of the original residents of Loch Haven, described his first trip to Loch Haven Beach as turning onto a dirt road, a very ruddy dirt road, off Central Avenue, and driving down to the big house on the hill where the dirt road turned into one lane. The road curved around and came onto the property along the back way and down to the beach area, instead of straight into Loch Haven as we know it today. 

All the property around the beach area was farmland with only one house on a bluff overlooking the South River, the rest was woods. You had to walk on dirt paths through the woods to view the properties or lots for sale, there were no roads.

 After the purchase of lots, it was another couple years before they got paved roads, making it quite the challenge of building a home, most of which were built as vacation cottages. Dick Edwards had a group of friends helping him build his house and because they all talked about using the house for a vacation or weekend get-away, Dick ending up building the house bigger than originally planned for all the visitors he expected he’d be having once the house was finished.

This article is based on a combination of a talk Dick Edwards gave to the Loch Haven Garden Club that he was invited to and asked to tell them about the ‘Beginning of Loch Haven’ and they recorded his story on cassette tape on March 17, 1999 and on two newspaper advertisements that were published in a Washington newspaper. Many thanks to Joan Donaldson, for providing copies of the two original newspaper advertisements for the lots for sale in Loch Haven Beach, they are priceless.