Late on the night of April 14, 1865, a guard at the far end of the Navy Yard Bridge allowed a young man on horseback to cross despite a wartime curfew, not knowing that the rider, John Wilkes Booth, had just shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre and was fleeing by way of Good Hope Road to the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd in Prince George's County, Maryland. Days later, as details of the assassination reached the Anacostia police substation, rumors that Booth might be hiding in the area prompted officers to search for him, but he was already long gone. The bridge he used, the first of many at this site, had been built in 1820 to let residents reach jobs at the Navy Yard; before that, people used the Eastern Branch Bridge at Pennsylvania Avenue, a structure dating to 1797 that was blown up in August 1814 as the British marched toward Washington during the War of 1812, though they reached the capital by way of Bladensburg Road instead. General William H. Winder, commander of the defenses of Washington and Baltimore, also ordered the destruction of the Navy Yard to keep it from British hands. The intersection later became Anacostia's first commercial center, from which businesses spread east along Good Hope Road and south on Nichols Avenue, including Robert Martin's general store and post office, his Farmers' and Drovers' Hotel, David Haines's blacksmith and wheelwright shop, Duvall's Tavern, George Pyle's grocery, and, farther out Good Hope Road, greenhouses and a brick factory that provided local jobs.
