Near Cameron Run, the Bloxham Cemetery preserves the last visible sign of three thousand years of human occupation. Small groups of American Indians used this place near a cobblestone stream to make tools as early as 3000 B.C., leaving sparse archaeological evidence that includes a fire hearth, pottery fragments, and stone flakes. After the American Revolution, the Bloxham family farmed here for more than a century and buried their dead in this small one-quarter-acre cemetery. Though covered over for a decade, the cemetery survived repeated land-altering development. During construction in the 1920s, graves were discovered, and eight graves, including those of five children, were moved to Bethel Cemetery while the remaining graves were buried under deep fill soil. Archaeological investigations in the 1990s rediscovered both the cemetery and an American Indian site, and in 2004 archaeologists working with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Improvement Project completed investigations to find all remaining graves before the City of Alexandria planned a recreational complex. After the Civil War, expansion of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad line helped transform the area into a center of large enterprise, including the Fruit Growers Express Company, which bought the Bloxham farm in 1926, manufactured refrigerated rail cars for carrying fresh produce across the eastern United States, and remained in business on this site until the 1980s.
