Columbia Island is located in the Potomac River in Washington,D.C. The island is a part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. In 1968, the island was renamed as Lady Bird Johnson Park in honor of Mrs.Johnson and the First Lady's Committee for a more beautiful capital planting of hundreds of dogwood trees and thousands of flowers on the island in 1965. Columbia Island is accessible from downtown Washington via the Arlington Memorial Bridge, from Arlington National Cemetery via Memorial Drive. The island is also accessible from Northern Virginia via the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

The island is home to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac, the Navy-Marine Memorial and the Columbia Island Marina. The island has many dogwoods, pines, and flowering bushes, as well as a million daffodils and some fine views of mainland Washington. Columbia Island came into being in 1916, when the Potomac River was dredged and the spoils piled up on the Virginia shore. Because the new land formed an island, it automatically became part of Washington. Though, according to an ancient law even part-ownership of the Potomac is denied to Virginia. But that didn’t prevent Virginia from protesting.

The matter was settled in the 1930s, when the District of Columbia received the island and Virginia received reclaimed land later developed as National Airport. In 1968, the National Park Service (NPS) designated the island as Lady Bird Johnson Park in honor of the then first lady’s efforts to beautify the country. The Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove was added in 1974, the year after the ex-president died.

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Geography of District of Columbia

Theodore Roosevelt Island

Columbia Island

Three Sisters Islands

Hans Point