Improvements continue at Whiting Creek public landing

County starts building parking lot to ease public use of Whiting Creek; more projects ahead

by Larry Chowning –

Improvements at Whiting Creek public landing at Locust Hill have been a long time coming, but work began recently to build a parking lot and bulkhead along a portion of the shoreline.

In November 2020, supervisors agreed to revisit a project originally spearheaded by a former Harmony Village supervisor, the late Jack Miller, to upgrade and provide more parking space at the Whiting Creek public boat landing and ramp.

A year later an article stated that the Middlesex County Board of Supervisors (MCBS) approved installing a bulkhead and parking lot at the landing.

At the March 1 supervisors meeting, Harmony Village Supervisor Reggie Williams informed the board that work had begun at the site and that he was excited for the county to have finally started work.

The ramp is located at the mouth of Whiting Creek, just yards away from the Rappahannock River. Recreational fishermen and boaters use the site year-round.

Supervisors are aware that Middlesex County has limited public waterfront access along the county’s shoreline on the Piankatank and Rappahannock rivers and Chesapeake Bay.

Part of the issue that Middlesex County and other localities are facing is that private waterfront property owners and public access to waterfront, when side-by-side, do not mix well.

Middlesex has small, end of state maintained road landings, where, for the most part, neighbors would rather they not be there! The county is one of the smallest counties in the state of Virginia, blessed with valuable privately owned waterfront property on three sides of its borders, and very little water access for the general public.