Editor’s note: This article, originally published April 16 at 4:47 p.m. was updated April 17 at 9:40 a.m. to add Elrich’s comments.
The owners of White’s Ferry announced Tuesday that they have offered to donate the operation to Montgomery County to “enhance the odds” of reopening the historic Potomac River crossing, which has been closed since December 2020.
“We are happy to propose a resolution to Montgomery County,” said Chuck Kuhn, the CEO of JK Land Holdings in a press release. “Our goal was always to get the ferry reopened.”
Kuhn and his wife, Stacy, own the ferry and the Maryland shoreline of the operation, which includes a store and grill. Chuck Kuhn wrote in the release that the ferry, “serves as a local economic engine and piece of history. Too many businesses and residents have had their livelihoods impacted by its closure.”
The ferry, which transported commuters across the Potomac River between Poolesville in Montgomery County and Leesburg in Loudoun County, Virginia, was established in 1786, according to the release. In December 2020, the ferry ceased operation after nearly 250 years due to a legal dispute between then-ferry owner Herb Brown and Rockland Farm in Virginia, which owns the Virginia landing site, according to the release.
The 2020 court case, Rockland Farm LLC, et. al. v. White’s Ferry Inc., established that “no public landing exists on the Virginia shoreline at White’s Ferry Road and the ferry is prohibited from landing at that location in Virginia.” With no public landing, White’s Ferry had to negotiate with Rockland Farm, which wanted to charge a toll for every car that drove on its land in order to use the ferry.
Rockland Farm is owned and managed by Libby Devlin, who wrote in an email to MoCo360 Tuesday, “This is great news! I look forward to working with Montgomery and Loudoun Counties to reopen a ferry as soon as possible!”
Tuesday evening, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich released a statement praising the developments.
“This represents an important milestone in the journey to restore ferry service between Montgomery County and Loudoun County, Virginia,” Elrich wrote.
According to Elrich’s statement, on Tuesday the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) and Kuhn’s representatives met to sort out details about the donation.
Both Elrich and County Council President Andrew Friedson noted that the county must still resolve the issue of the landing site on the Virginia side.
“That’s the piece that’s still outstanding,” Friedson said. “So, this development today doesn’t resolve all issues but it’s a positive step, it’s promising news. And it is part of the ongoing conversations that are happening but I am hopeful and cautiously optimistic that it will lead to a resolution which is years overdue at this point.”
County Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe (D-Dist. 2) who represents the district where White’s Ferry is located, echoed Elrich and Friedson, and said that the Virginia landing site has “always been the issue.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, I appreciate the offer, but we really need the landing site,” she told MoCo360 Tuesday.
In 2020, Rockland Farm posted on Facebook that it sued White’s Ferry as a “last resort” after the companies couldn’t come to an agreement over the ferry’s use of the Rockland property, according to MoCo360 reporting at the time.
“White’s Ferry took the position that it did not need to pay to use Rockland’s land to operate its private business,” the farm posted.
The Kuhns purchased the ferry and the Maryland landing site in February 2021 from Brown with the hopes of quickly reopening the ferry.
Negotiations between the parties have failed multiple times over the last few years, including in March 2023 when Chuck Kuhn announced that his joint $1.1 million bid for the Virginia landing site—a bid “well above” the land value, he alleged—was rejected by the owners of Rockland Farm.
“The reason that we turned down the $1.1 million combined offer from Loudoun County, Montgomery County and Mr. Kuhn is that Rockland Farm will not accept a flat fee for its Virginia landing,” Devlin wrote to MoCo360 at the time. “We favor a volume-based fee that varies with the amount of traffic encroaching upon our land and will work with either county to accomplish that.”
She added that Rockland Farm previously made an offer to both Montgomery and Loudoun counties for a permanent easement on the Virginia landing in exchange for a volume-based fee.
More recently in October, then-County Council President Evan Glass (D-At-large) said there were “glimmers of hope,” noting that Delvin “mentioned a few other suggestions that she would be amenable to.”
Still, there weren’t public updates until Tuesday.
“Our donation will be the best way forward,” Kuhn said in Tuesday’s release. “This is not what we had originally envisioned, but we recognize the importance of White’s Ferry to our region. With this donation, we believe that Montgomery County will be able to work with Virginia to get the ferry moving again.”
–MoCo360’s Ginny Bixby, Dan Schere, Em Espey and Courtney Cohn contributed to this report.