Alexandria's waterfront has served as a departure point for Potomac voyages since the 18th century, when tobacco inspectors and colonial merchants moved cargo between the wharves at Cameron Street and Georgetown. The cobblestone landings that edge Old Town today occupy the same stretch George Washington once surveyed as a teenage assistant. By the mid-19th century, steamboat companies ran daily packets between Alexandria and Washington City, carrying commuters and freight along a route that threaded marshlands, federal monuments, and the estates of slaveholding planters. Today the Potomac corridor between Alexandria and the National Mall remains one of the few navigable waterways offering unobstructed sightlines to the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center, and the Pentagon's river façade. Cruise operators departing from the Alexandria city dock offer dining voyages, narrated sightseeing loops, and combination packages that pair river transit with bus-based monument tours. The waterfront promenade at zero Cameron Street serves as the primary embarkation zone, a public space open daily from 09:00 to 17:00 with no entrance fee; individual cruise tickets are purchased separately through licensed operators. The river itself is tidal, with a four-foot rise and fall that shifts the shoreline twice daily. Navigation channels are dredged to twelve feet, permitting mid-sized touring vessels but excluding the deep-draft cargo ships that once dominated the port. Bald eagles nest along the Virginia bank near Dyke Marsh, a 485-acre wetland preserve managed by the National Park Service. The waterway's width varies from under a mile at Chain Bridge to nearly two miles at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, creating sheltered passages and open panoramas depending on the route. Modern Alexandria river tours capitalize on this geographic position — equidistant from Mount Vernon to the south and the federal monuments to the north — offering a vantage that neither the National Mall nor the Capital Beltway can replicate.