By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Montgomery County officials stood in Poolesville on Friday to announce what they’re calling a breakthrough: the county has struck a deal with White’s Ferry owner Chuck Kuhn to acquire the Maryland-side dock, boat ramp, picnic grounds and White’s Ferry Grill in Dickerson, with Kuhn donating the ferry operation itself.
The county just spent taxpayer money to buy the easy half of a problem it has never controlled.
County Executive Marc Elrich framed it as the move that finally unsticks a six-year stalemate. “It’s been a very difficult issue getting both sides of the river to negotiate,” Elrich said Thursday. “This clears the way for us to be able to do that.”
There’s a version of this story where that’s true. There’s another version — supported by everything on the public record before Friday — where the county just spent taxpayer money to buy the easy half of a problem it has never controlled, and quietly positioned itself for a legal fight over the hard half without telling the person on the other side of the river.
What the county actually bought
County transportation director Chris Conklin confirmed the county is acquiring Kuhn’s Maryland-side land and equipment through a mix of purchase and gift, but declined to disclose the price ahead of Friday’s announcement. Sources told WTOP the land is being bought below appraised value, with the ferry operation itself coming as a straight donation from Kuhn. A Monocacy Monocle report three weeks ago, before the deal was confirmed, put the value of the ferry-operations donation at $1.3 million — a figure MDBayNews has not been able to independently verify against Friday’s terms.
Whatever the final number, it’s not the first public money aimed at this problem. In April 2025, Elrich sent what he called a “last attempt” offer: a $3 million incentive package, split evenly between a Maryland General Assembly appropriation and a Montgomery County capital budget amendment, meant to push Kuhn and Virginia landowner Libby Devlin into a deal by July 1, 2026. That deadline came and went without an agreement. What happened to that $3 million — returned to the state, reallocated, or folded into Friday’s purchase — is a straightforward records question the county hasn’t answered publicly.
The half nobody bought
The ferry hasn’t run since December 2020, when a Loudoun County judge ruled that White’s Ferry had no legal right to land on Rockland Farm, a family property on the Virginia shore owned by Libby Devlin and her brother Peter Brown. Kuhn bought the ferry and the Maryland landing in 2021, hoping to reopen quickly. He never reached a deal with Devlin.
Friday’s transaction doesn’t change that. Devlin told WTOP she wasn’t aware the deal was happening and wasn’t invited to the news conference. Rockland Farm has previously turned down offers to sell land on the Virginia side outright.
County ownership ‘clears the way’ to negotiate. The Virginia landowner says she learned about the deal from a reporter.
It’s also not the county’s first crack at this exact structure. Kuhn formally offered to donate the ferry operation to Montgomery County back in April 2024, and his company says the county accepted verbally before backing away from it. Elrich’s stated reason: the donation didn’t include the land needed to actually access and operate the ferry. Kuhn, by his own account, “surprised and disappointed,” pivoted in April 2025 and offered the same donation — the operation and assets, valued at $4.5 million — to Loudoun County instead, saying Loudoun officials had had “positive preliminary discussions.” The next day, Elrich announced the $3 million incentive plan in place of accepting either version. Whatever changed between then and Friday’s announcement — including whether the land question that sank the 2024 offer got resolved this time — is worth asking Conklin directly.
Whatever changed between the rejected 2024 donation and Friday’s announcement is worth asking directly.
That’s worth sitting with. The county’s own executive is telling the public that county ownership “clears the way” to negotiate with Virginia — while the Virginia landowner says she found out from a reporter. Those two facts don’t fit together cleanly, and MDBayNews has asked Elrich’s office to reconcile them.
Why the money fight was never really about money
Public narratives about this dispute tend to flatten it into “two stubborn landowners.” The record is messier than that, and it cuts both ways. Devlin has consistently pushed for a volume-based toll — 50 cents per vehicle — arguing Rockland Farm should be compensated the way any commercial landing would be. In March 2023, Kuhn made a different kind of offer: a joint $1.1 million bid, backed by both Loudoun and Montgomery counties, to buy the Virginia landing outright — a price Kuhn himself called “well above” its appraised value. Rockland Farm turned it down anyway. Devlin has said she’s offered five separate settlement structures over the years, including donating a permanent easement to either county government, and that all of them were disregarded. She’s also offered binding arbitration.
Neither side comes out of that record looking like the sole obstacle.
Neither side comes out of that record looking like the sole obstacle. Devlin rejected a bid Kuhn says exceeded the land’s appraised value; Kuhn and the counties, by Devlin’s account, ignored her own settlement offers in return. Both claims deserve equal scrutiny going forward, not just the one that’s gotten more regional coverage.
The eminent domain question the county isn’t answering
Buying the Maryland side doesn’t move the ferry an inch unless Virginia agrees—or Loudoun County acts.
Montgomery County has no legal authority to condemn land in Virginia. Only Loudoun County can exercise eminent domain over the Rockland Farm landing — and the idea has been on the table since at least 2021, when Kuhn began pushing Loudoun’s Board of Supervisors to take the property by force and hand him landing rights. Loudoun supervisors were weighing a possible eminent domain vote as early as December 2021, following a legal study the two counties reportedly commissioned together; MDBayNews has not been able to confirm the study’s existence or findings through a primary source and could not locate a public resolution to the question. A separate, more mundane obstacle compounds the legal picture: the ferry’s old zoning exemption on the Virginia side has since expired, meaning any restart likely requires Loudoun to act on zoning as well as, or instead of, eminent domain.
A separate obstacle now complicates the legal picture: the ferry’s Virginia zoning exemption has expired.
Devlin has argued for years that dangling condemnation over her family’s land has been the actual barrier to a deal, not the reverse — that Kuhn has had no incentive to negotiate seriously while the government threat sat in his back pocket. She and other witnesses at Loudoun hearings have also raised a more basic legal problem: condemning private property to hand landing rights to a privately owned, for-profit ferry business is a constitutionally shaky use of eminent domain.
That objection gets a lot weaker if the ferry isn’t privately owned anymore. With Montgomery County now holding the Maryland-side operation as a public asset, a future eminent domain case for Loudoun County to condemn the Virginia landing looks like public infrastructure taking private land for public use — a far more defensible posture than condemning it for Chuck Kuhn’s business. That reframing may be the actual point of Friday’s deal, whether or not county officials say so out loud. It would also explain, better than anything in Friday’s press materials, why Devlin was left off the invite list.
What if she still says no
The county hasn’t publicly explained what happens if Rockland Farm never agrees.
Nobody in county government has said publicly what happens if Rockland Farm never agrees to a deal. The Maryland-side land the county is acquiring has value on its own — a working boat ramp, picnic grounds and the White’s Ferry Grill aren’t worthless without a ferry attached — so the county isn’t left holding a stranded asset in the way it would be if the whole deal hinged on Virginia’s cooperation. But the actual goal, a running ferry, stays exactly as far away as it’s been since 2020 unless one of two things happens: Devlin agrees to terms, or Loudoun County takes her land.
It is not yet known whether the county now has, or intends to pursue, a legal path to eminent domain in coordination with Loudoun County, and what the timeline or fallback plan is if Rockland Farm doesn’t move.
This story draws on reporting and public statements from WTOP, The Baltimore Banner, Bethesda Magazine, InsideNoVa, Loudoun Now, MoCoShow, the Chesapeake Bay Magazine, the Blue Ridge Leader, and Montgomery Community Media’s coverage of the Monocacy Monocle’s reporting, alongside primary materials including Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s April 2025 letter and press release, and public statements and press releases from ferry owner Chuck Kuhn’s companies, JK Land Holdings and White’s Ferry. Direct quotes from Elrich, Chris Conklin, and Libby Devlin are drawn from on-the-record statements to WTOP, The Baltimore Banner, and Loudoun Times. One detail regarding a joint Loudoun-Montgomery legal study on eminent domain could not be confirmed through a primary source and is noted as unconfirmed in the text.
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