K Street in Georgetown is part of one of Washington’s oldest planned east-west thoroughfares, originally intended by Pierre L’Enfant to provide a clear visual axis toward the Potomac. The critical crossing of Rock Creek at this location was the second bridge built over the creek (after the one at M Street). A triple-arched stone bridge was begun in 1792 by Leonard Harbaugh; its center arch proved unstable and was removed in 1795, leaving the structure in ruins for decades. A wooden bridge followed in 1869, replaced by a steel-plate girder span in 1907. The present multi-level structure (lower level carrying surface K Street, upper level carrying the Whitehurst Freeway) was built in stages between 1939 and 1949, with later ramps added and partially removed. In Georgetown, the western approach to the bridge runs through an area of historic warehouses, former industrial buildings, and the edge of the waterfront and C&O Canal. The neighborhood itself predates the federal city (chartered 1751) and retains many 18th- and 19th-century structures.
Reported Hauntings and Folklore
The primary legend attached specifically to K Street in Georgetown is that of a headless man who is said to appear on the Georgetown side of the K Street Bridge over Rock Creek, especially on starless nights. The story is first documented in a 1908 article by Hugh T. Taggart in the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. (Vol. 11). Taggart notes that he does not know the origin of the apparition and observes, with dry humor, that the figure has never attempted to acquire a replacement head from passersby (in contrast to the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow folklore). Later retellings in local ghost literature and modern articles repeat the account of an unidentified headless figure associated with the bridge. No consistent contemporary eyewitness reports or documented investigations have been published; the tale remains a regional piece of early-20th-century local lore.
Nearby Georgetown bridges and streets carry related but separate traditions (a phantom stagecoach and a drummer boy on the M Street Bridge, for example). The broader neighborhood is rich in other well-known ghost stories—Halcyon House, the Old Stone House, the Exorcist Steps, and various Civil War-era and spiritualist sites—but these are not centered on K Street itself.
Relevant links
National Park Service materials on Rock Creek bridges
Wikipedia: Reportedly haunted locations in Washington, D.C.
WTOP: Haunted DC – Georgetown’s phantoms (includes K Street Bridge account)
Historic American Engineering Record: K Street Bridge (Library of Congress)
