of the George Washington Memorial Parkway at the Three Sisters. The bridge was designed to carry the unbuilt Interstate 266, part of the proposed Inner Loop system of beltway superhighways designed for the inner parts of the District of Columbia. Construction of the bridge would also have required that Congress fund construction of the proposed Potomac River Freeway. Over the next 11 years, there would be several lawsuits (most of which were won by opponents of the bridge) and numerous protests — including an attempt to occupy the Three Sisters. In 1966, Representative William Natcher, chairman of the Subcommittee on Appropriations for the District of Columbia of the House Committee on Appropriations, threatened to withhold money for the construction of the Washington Metro if the bridge were not built. Natcher was a strong advocate of highway construction, and used his subcommittee position to win support for public works projects in his home district; it was the House Public Works Committee which had first approved the bridge. A bitter eight-year political battle occurred, during which Natcher repeatedly deleted money for Metro from the federal budget. Repeatedly District of Columbia and United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) officials would agree to build the bridge, causing the Metro money to be restored, and then reasons for not building the bridge would be found. Finally, in December 1971, Representative Robert Giaimo led a successful revolt on the House floor which restored the Metro funding over Natcher's vehement opposition. Without the threat of losing Metro money, D.C. and USDOT officials quietly deleted the bridge from their construction plans. The bridge project was declared dead by The Washington Post in May 1977. In popular culture The islets are integral to the plot of Breena Clarke's best-selling novel River, Cross My Heart, set in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in 1925. A false legend about the landmark (that three nuns drowned at the Three Sisters, giving the rocks their name) is given in River, Cross My Heart, and also by David Baldacci in his novel The Camel Club. The islets also appear in Carolivia Herron's 1992 novel Thereafter, Johnnie, and in Margaret Truman's 1995 murder-mystery novel Murder on the Potomac. References Bibliography Alexander, John. Ghosts: Washington's Most Famous Ghost Stories. Washington, D.C.: Washingtonian Books, 1975. Bahr, Jeff; Taylor, Troy; Coleman, Loren; Moran, Mark; and Sceurman, Mark. Weird Virginia: Your Travel Guide to Virginia's Local Legends and