Truckin' on the Western Branch

Image by Sheally

Captain Robert Carney Powers, U.S. Navy (Retired).

Captain Robert Carney Powers, U.S. Navy (Retired).

Robert Carney Powers, retired career Naval officer In the late 1940s, George T. McLean bought the Carney farm, but the family kept Vacation Lane on the water, and Powers’ grandfather built a house there on the point. When Powers’ father retired from the Navy as a rear admiral, the family moved from Arlington, Virginia, back to Churchland to the Vacation Lane property. Robert Powers, a sophomore at Churchland High, was surrounded by family. He played center on the school’s record-setting 1954–55 football team and waterskied in his Green Acres neighborhood with friends—his cousin Charlie Hawks, Bob Stanton, and Page Garrett.

In 1954 the area was mostly woods and farms. There was no fast food strip and Churchland Boulevard was Route 17 since there was no High Street yet. There was a railroad, but Churchland wasn’t even a whistle stop. The football team hung out at A.W. Johnson’s store—for RC Colas and Moon Pies.

Churchland was small and friendly with a few housing developments, and Churchland Baptist was at the heart of the community. Sterling Point and Green Acres were among the first developments in the early 1950s.

Western Branch was all country—Bruce, Taylor, and Joliff roads were in cornfields with a house here and there.

Churchland has changed physically—when the new road opened (High Street) it became a fast food and auto sale strip—had no character and is getting run down.

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