If you have paddled out from the little gravel lot on Riverpoint Drive, or walked the wooded loop along Goose Creek with your dog, you have used a park that carries a different name than it did before 2022. Most Lansdowne residents know the place. Fewer know the story behind why the county rewrote its name plate.
The park along the Potomac and Goose Creek that borders the back of the neighborhood was called Elizabeth Mills Riverfront Park for years. The kayak and canoe launch tucked off Riverpoint Drive was called Kephart Bridge Landing. Both names honored George Kephart, who at one point owned the Coton and Belmont plantations that once covered this land. Kephart built his wealth working in the domestic slave trade. In early 2022, after Loudoun County's Parks, Recreation and Open Space board solicited public input, both sites were renamed. The park became Bazil Newman Riverfront Park. The landing became Riverpoint Drive Trailhead.
Bazil Newman was a Black entrepreneur who operated a ferry on this same stretch of river in the 19th century. The county's decision to put his name on the ground where your kayak now touches water was not incidental. It replaced a name tied to human trafficking with one tied to a man who built something and ran it himself, on the same water, generations before the HOA amphitheater or the Potomac Club pool existed.
That is the part of this park most people driving past the sign never stop to read. The rest of this post is what you actually do with the place now that you know its name means something.
The Park Nobody Renamed by Accident
Loudoun County does not rename parks casually. The move to honor Bazil Newman came out of a public process, not a quiet swap, and it applied to both the park and the specific boat landing inside it. That second detail matters if you are trying to find the place on an older map, an app, or a neighbor's hand-drawn directions from five years ago. Paddling sites and older listings sometimes still reference "Kephart Bridge Landing." If you see that name, it is the same launch you already know as Riverpoint Drive Trailhead. It did not move. It was renamed.
Here is the naming history laid out plainly, since half of Lansdowne is still working off the old labels:
| Then | Now | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Elizabeth Mills Riverfront Park | Bazil Newman Riverfront Park | 100-plus acres of parkland on the Potomac and Goose Creek |
| Kephart Bridge Landing | Riverpoint Drive Trailhead | Canoe and kayak launch inside the park |
Who You're Actually Launching a Kayak For
Bazil Newman ran a ferry crossing this river before bridges made that trade obsolete. He was not a landowner memorialized for owning the ground. He was someone who used the river the way you use it now, for transportation, for work, for getting from one side of Loudoun County to the other. There is something fitting about a canoe launch carrying that name instead of a plantation owner's, and it is worth knowing the next time you're strapping a paddle to your car.
Finding the Launch If You Haven't Been Yet
The Riverpoint Drive Trailhead sits inside Bazil Newman Riverfront Park, accessed from Riverpoint Drive within the Lansdowne community itself. If you are coming from the Belmont Ridge Road entrance, cross over Riverside Parkway and turn left onto Riverpoint Drive. From inside the park, Squirrel Ridge Drive connects back to Riverpoint Drive, crossing Upper Belmont Place, with the landing entrance on the left.
What you will find once you're there is modest by design. A small parking lot. A port-a-potty. A flat, beach-like put-in that works for canoes and kayaks but is a carry-in site, meaning no trailers and no motorized boats. The trail system that fans out from the landing is part of the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail, and it runs along both the Potomac and Goose Creek in each direction, connecting eventually to Elizabeth Mills Riverfront Park's namesake canal lock ruins and on toward Bles Park and Broad Run.
Wear long pants if you're planning to walk rather than paddle. The trail sections through tall grass are not manicured the way the neighborhood's internal walking paths are, and that is part of the appeal if you're used to the more polished Potomac Club loop.
What Fall Actually Looks Like Out There
September and October are the window locals who know this park actually use it. The water is calmer than spring runoff, the bugs thin out, and the tree cover along Goose Creek turns before the rest of Loudoun catches up. Wildlife sightings along the trail regularly include cranes and cardinals working the shoreline, which is a reasonable trade for the small parking lot and the lack of amenities elsewhere in the park.
This is also the stretch of calendar when the Lansdowne on the Potomac HOA runs its own fall programming, including Fall Fest and the Turkey Trot, both listed on the HOA's event calendar for residents planning ahead. If you're building a fall weekend around the river anyway, it is worth checking the HOA's schedule before you go, since a paddle at Riverpoint Drive Trailhead pairs easily with an afternoon at one of those community events without much driving in between.
For golfers in the neighborhood, the same fall window is prime time at the Golf Club at Lansdowne, which spans three courses across 45 holes designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Greg Norman. It sits close enough to the river park that a morning round and an afternoon paddle are not an unreasonable Saturday.
Why the Name Still Matters When You're Not Thinking About It
It would be easy to treat all of this as a footnote, the kind of historical marker you skim once and forget. But the practical value of knowing the story is that it changes how you talk about the place. When a neighbor asks where you launched your kayak, or a new resident asks what's back behind Riverpoint Drive, you now have an answer with substance in it. Not just "there's a park back there," but the actual account of a ferryman's name replacing a slave trader's, on a stretch of river that predates the neighborhood by more than a century.
Loudoun County's parks system does not always explain its renamings loudly. The 2022 change to Bazil Newman Riverfront Park got coverage from Loudoun Now at the time, but it is easy to miss if you were not paying attention to local news that particular February. Most people who move into Lansdowne learn the park as an amenity first, a line item on the community's list of things to do, somewhere between the pickleball courts and the tot lots. Few learn it as a place with a documented history attached to its current name.
That gap between what the park offers and what it is named for is the kind of detail that tells you something about how this specific neighborhood sits inside Loudoun County's history, not as a generic riverside subdivision, but as a patch of ground with plantation-era roots that the county chose, deliberately, to reframe.
The Short Version for Anyone Headed Out This Weekend
If you're new to the park or just haven't been in a while, the practical takeaways are simple. Riverpoint Drive Trailhead is your launch point for canoes and kayaks, reached via Squirrel Ridge Drive or directly off Riverpoint Drive depending on which entrance you're closest to. Bring a small vehicle since the lot is limited. Wear pants that can handle brush if you're hiking rather than paddling. And go now, while the fall water levels and cooler air make the Potomac Heritage Trail segment through the park one of the better hours you can spend without leaving the neighborhood.
The name on the sign is not decoration. It is the county's answer to a question about whose history gets remembered on the riverbank behind your house. Bazil Newman ran a ferry here. Now you know that every time you carry a kayak down to the water.
If you're thinking about what a home near this stretch of the Potomac is actually worth, or you're weighing whether Lansdowne's riverfront access changes how you'd price a listing here, Sell Buy NOVA Homes knows this neighborhood block by block. Let's Connect.
