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A NAVAL NEIGHBOR

Though the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division is not in Colonial Beach or even in Westmoreland County, it is one of the town’s largest employers of both navy and civilian personnel in jobs ranging from computer specialists and engineers to painters and secretaries. In all, its staff of approximately 5,200 from Colonial Beach, King George County and beyond is actually larger than the entire population of Colonial Beach. Many of the people you’ll meet in these pages have worked on the base in one capacity or another.

Opened in 1918 and named in honor of Rear Admiral John Adolphus Dahlgren, a Civil War–era navy commander with a specialty in ordnance, Dahlgren’s Potomac River Test Range has allowed for the test firing of various weapons developed by base experts. Patrol boats are still visible on the river on days when tests are being conducted to keep boaters out of the range.

The booming sound of those tests shakes the ground, sends dogs into a frenzy and leaves pictures on the walls of every home perpetually crooked.

Amazingly, during my college years, I often played golf on the base course with a friend who was on his college golf team. Whenever I hear a professional golfer grumbling about the click of a camera shutter, I think perhaps he or she should spend a few practice sessions at Dahlgren with those guns firing. Nothing as inconsequential as a camera shutter would ever affect his or her concentration—or backswing—again.

I also recall a particularly noisy day right after the start of the first Gulf War when a couple of missiles fired from warships reportedly missed their mark. The testing of those guidance systems went into overdrive on the Potomac, and corrections were seemingly made within hours of the misfires, a real-time demonstration of the value of the work being conducted on the base.

Walter Purcell and buddies, WWII

Colonial Beach naval officers, 1940s

The War Memorial in Colonial Beach

William Hall, Tommy Powell, John Lewis, Donald Hall, 1948

Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren Virginia, 1955