Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm, Living farm museum in Oxon Hill, Maryland, United States.
Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm is an open-air agricultural museum on the Potomac River in Oxon Hill, Maryland, made up of 19th-century farm buildings and live animals. The grounds also include the Mount Welby house, a residential structure from the early 19th century built in the Renaissance Revival style.
The land was originally inhabited by the Piscataway Nation and later used as a tobacco plantation before it became a working farm for patients of St. Elizabeth's Hospital starting in 1891. After the hospital closed its farming operations, the National Park Service took over the site and turned it into a public park.
Visitors can feed and interact with farm animals, which makes the daily rhythms of farm life very tangible, especially for children. The animals kept here belong to older breeds that were once common on working farms across the region.
The park sits along the Potomac River and is easy to navigate on foot thanks to paved pathways throughout the grounds. Since most of the experience takes place outdoors, wearing comfortable shoes and dressing for the weather makes the visit much more enjoyable.
The Mount Welby house was built between 1807 and 1811 and features Italian architectural details that are very unusual for an American farmhouse of that era. It is one of the few buildings in the region where this European influence shows so directly in the construction itself.
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