The island was also reshaped by the government at this time "to serve as the western terminus of Arlington Memorial Bridge and a symbolic entrance into the nation’s capital.

Dredged material was piled high on Columbia Island, helping to build it higher, lengthen and broaden it, and give it its current shape.

[3] The new island received its name in about 1918 from an unnamed engineer working for the District of Columbia[4] and the first use of this name in The Washington Post was in April 1922,[5] the same year it was transferred to the National Park Service.

Because this significantly impacted the approaches to the bridge, the CFA asked Kendall to restudy Sinclair's proposal for the Columbia Island terminus.

Architect Milton Bennett Medary (who left the CFA in 1927) wrote to the Commission of Fine Arts in January 1928 after having seen Kendall's proposal.

Columbia Island, he said, should reflect a simple, formal dignity that helps ease the transition from the Neoclassical mall and bridge to the informal landscaping of Arlington National Cemetery.

[20] Medary's argument proved persuasive to the CFA, and in late May the commission and Kendall announced a revised treatment in which a great plaza would be built on Columbia Island.

From this plaza, roads would lead across the island to bridges which would connect with the proposed Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway and Lee Highway.

This "rotten rock" had not been revealed by borings two years earlier, but now came to light as construction began on the Boundary Channel Bridge.

Additionally, a thin layer of sand and gravel was discovered lying atop the bedrock of the eastern abutment of the Boundary Channel Bridge.

But no construction had occurred on the Columbia Island great plaza, its monumental columns, or the two pylons as the CFA had still not approved a final design for these.

In order to avoid an at-grade crossing with Memorial Drive, the CFA proposed in June 1927 that these tracks be lower by 20 feet (6.1 m).

[32] CFA members began to question whether the columns were effective in memorializing the reunited North and South, although there was still agreement that they were integral to the great plaza's design.

[21] Additionally, by now the Great Depression was having a severe and negative impact on funding for the entire Arlington Memorial Bridge project.

With the bridge and its connection to Arlington National Cemetery essentially finished, Congress hesitated to provide funds for Columbia Island.

Rather than building extensive roads north and south on the island when no connections were ready to be made, the CFA also agreed that only short segments of these avenues be built adjacent to the great plaza.

[37] Design issues surrounding the Columbia Island great plaza were resolved in late 1931 not by the CFA, but by President Herbert Hoover.

[42] On October 12, Hoover ordered AMBC staff, Kendall, the CFA, and Arlington Memorial Bridge consulting engineer W. J. Douglas to restudy the columns.

[47] Faced with overwhelming opposition, the AMBC voted to eliminate the columns in December 1931, and asked Kendall for yet another new design for Columbia Island.

[42] In the wake of the AMBC's decision, proposals came from the public and architects outside the project to add either high-spouting fountains or towers which would retract whenever planes took off from the airports.

Convinced that massive federal spending on public works was essential not only to "prime the pump" of the economy but also to cut unemployment, Roosevelt proposed passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act.

On July 13, just a month after the PWA was formed, the agency announced a $3 million grant to finish work on Columbia Island and other parts of the Arlington Memorial Bridge project.

[54] The CFA and NCPC met in November to decide how to proceed on Columbia Island, which had only one link to Virginia – and that led only to Arlington National Cemetery.

These roads were staked out in January 1934, and the CFA and NCPC began discussing whether a new, large traffic circle should be added to the center of the island to replace the bottleneck that a simple cross-axis would be.

[72] District of Columbia officials asked permission in January 1958 to build a small approach bridge to the Roosevelt span over Boundary Channel, but the CFA refused a month later.

However, lack of funds meant that instead of a wavy green granite base, the statue stood atop a concrete plinth.

In May 1934, the commission overseeing the memorial's construction asked the Works Progress Administration for a $100,000 grant to complete the granite steps.

[4] Columbia Island was renamed Lady Bird Johnson Park by the United States Department of the Interior on November 12, 1968 in honor of her work on the beautification campaign.

Lady Bird Johnson Park is a popular location which authors like to include in their fiction novels, sometimes using the old name Columbia Island.

[99] Sean Flannery has mentioned the Columbia Island Marina and the Boundary Channel in his novel Moving Targets,[100] as did Kim Stanley Robinson in his Forty Signs of Rain.