Towns of Fairfax County

Brief History and Information of Fairfax County and Towns:

Information provided by Times Community Newspaper, “Total Guide to Fairfax, 2005” and other sources.

Fairfax County is a major business center in the Washington, D.C. area. Fairfax County is the largest jurisdiction in the Washington area and contains some of its most desirable residential communities.

More than half of the county's employed residents work in the county. With thriving business centers such as Tyson’s Corner, Chantilly and Reston and a broad spectrum of residential communities, Fairfax County residents enjoy one of the highest levels of quality of life in the nation.

Business taxes generated by commercial development fund some of the finest public services in the country. The Fairfax County Public Schools are consistently rated among the best in the nation, with many special academic programs and high test scores and graduation rates. The Fairfax County Public Library System is the largest public library system in Virginia with a total circulation topping 2 million items a year.

Fairfax County offers its residents a broad range of historical and entertainment options, including George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate. The nation’s only national park for the performing arts, Wolf Trap Farm Park, is in Fairfax County.

Fairfax County residents also take advantage of nearby cultural and recreational outlets. To the east there is the Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic Ocean beaches, and the monuments, museums and nightlife in Washington, D.C. To the west are the famed Blue Ridge Mountains. To the south are the Civil War battlefields surrounding Manassas, Fredericksburg and Richmond.

Fairfax County has a lot to offer—a dynamic business community, affordable housing, an abundance of recreational opportunities and proximity to Washington, D.C., the mountains and the beaches.

Some of the towns:

Burke
Burke received its name from Silas Burke, an antebellum entrepreneur who brought the Alexandria and Orange Railroad to central Fairfax County. The suburban community tool major shape after a stalled effort by the federal government to turn the area into the site of the Dulles International Airport. Burke Centre is a 1,700 acre planned residential community (PRC) of about 5,800 homes located within Burke. Housing consists of single family detached homes, town houses, condominiums, co-ops, duplexes and quads.

City of Fairfax
The City of Fairfax consciously works to maintain its small town atmosphere, strong historic ties and close-knit community in the geographic center of an ever-growing Fairfax County. The city’s parks and recreation department coordinates several annual special events, including the Chocolate Lovers Festival in February, Spotlight on the Arts in early spring, a Fourth of July celebration including a parade attended by thousands, a summer concert series, and a fall festival in October.

Great Falls
Great Falls is home of the great park along the Potomac River where there are great falls to be seen and heard. An unincorporated community, Great Falls is also a low-density residential community whose semi-rural character was defined by its principal industry in the 1940s. In the 1980s, it became the place to live because of its many parks, proximity to the Potomac River, and access to employment centers in Washington DC, Tysons Corner, and the Route 28 technology corridor in Loudoun County. It is named for a major geological formation that caused a 75-foot drop in the Potomac River as it pours through Mather Gorge, creating the “Great Falls of the Potomac.”

McLean
McLean grew from an electric trolley stop on the line that ran from Georgetown, in Washington, DC, to the Great Falls of Potomac in what is now a national park. The trolley was developed by John McLean, a Scot who published The Washington Post , and the town that grew up around the trolley stop gradually took his name.
After World War II, McLean grew into a bedroom community whose modest bungalows still populate the neighborhoods on the east, near Arlington. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) located its headquarters in McLean in the 1950s. As the community expanded to the west, so did the size of the houses in developments such as The Reserve on Georgetown Pike. Housing in McLean is primarily single-family dwellings, three-fourth of them occupied by families.

Mount Vernon
Named after the plantation owned by George Washington, Mount Vernon is a community bordering the Potomac at the southern extremity of Fairfax County. Both Washington and his wife, Martha, are buried on the Mount Vernon estate. Gum Springs, one of Mount Vernon’s oldest communities, was settled by slaves set free by George Washington.

Springfield
As construction continues to attempt to improve traffic through the interchanges of I-91, I-395, and I-495, significant strides where made in 2004 with the opening of the I-95 South bridge, citizens and businesses are giving the rest of Springfield a boost as well. One other change that is moving forward is the completion of the last segment of the Fairfax County Parkway through the Arm’s Engineer Proving Ground property. VDOT officials are making the project a priority and putting its completion on the fast track. Also, as Springfield continues to diversify into one of the county’s more pronounced “melting pots,” incorporating more people of various nationalities into positions where they can help shape the community will be a challenge for Springfield residents and officials well into the foreseeable future.

Tysons Corner
Tysons Corner, the downtown of Fairfax County, is changing from a strictly commercial district to a mixed-use community. High-density housing is starting to spring up, bringing the vision for a downtown or city concept closer to reality. The number of restaurants is increasing, and a grocery store is planned at last. Tysons Corner’s golden triangle is bounded by Route 7, Route 123, and the Capital Beltway. The Dulles Toll Road and i-66 bisect the area that was once noted for its orchards, cattle farms, and gravel pits. Today, Tysons Corner has more than 25.6 million square feet of office space, more than the downtowns of Pittsburg and Richmond combined. That makes Tysons Corner one of the largest urban centers in the US. Construction cranes abound particularly in the Lerner Cos. land at the Tysons Galleria office park. Tysons Corner Center, started back in 1968 as the first mall to serve the burgeoning suburbs of western Fairfax and doubled in the 1980s, and is expanding again. When it is completed, including more shops and a theater complex, it will be the sixth-largest mall in the nation.