This picture, taken in the 1950’s looks south on Route 123 toward
Vienna, and shows the Tysons Corner Store and on the opposite corner the Crossroads Market.

The Shirley Memorial Highway (I-395), a divided roadway with controlled access, was constructed from the Pentagon to Prince William County to ease traffic flow for federal employees traveling into the city…  Soon after Shirley Highway’s completion in 1951, the traffic was up to 35,000 cars per day.

For thirty-five years, 1930-1965, the younger Watson’s had resided in a bungalow south of and fronting on Route 123.  Before it was demolished because it stood in the path of International Drive on its way to the 1968 Shopping Center, it was used as the first construction office for the center.

Says James Hawthorne:  “First of all, they opened one section of it from Braddock Road… to Springfield.  That was the first segment that opened.  And it took a couple of years to build the Beltway… My grandfather, who lived to be 100, he would ask me a question, he said ‘Where do all those people go?  They just travel around in a circle.’ ”  (1968)

…Rebel Hill […] was extremely hard for cars to go up whenever there was snow or ice.  The road was very narrow – what we could consider a lane and a half, at this point… It wasn’t like regular paving and the banks were very, very high and then the trees arched over… not quite gravel, but pretty close.  (Late 1960s)

“Old Virginia City”, a frontier town on Route 29 west of the City, operated during the 1960s.  It featured cowboys, Indians, can-can girls, a real steam train, historical exhibits, and an operating printing press.

Four years after Charles  Bell’s 1957 death, Mr. Schmitz purchased the business (a service station) from the widow and continues to operate it in 1989, his 35th year on the Route 7/Spring Hill corner and perhaps on of his last since there is a contract on his land at 8526 Leesburge Pike and the adjacent Hayes Lumber Co. at 8520.

As the rural character of Fairfax County gradually was replaced by suburban residential, commercial, and industrial development, farming became an exceptional activity…  Shown here is a plowing scene at Sunset Hills farm near present Reston about 1959.

After earlier selling all but a 1.8 acre rectangle of her land, in Dec. 1965, E. Pearl Ragan Kuldell and her husband sold 0.8 acres to Gulf Oil Corp.  Chevron Gas Station and the Black Medical Building at 8516 Leesburg Pike are in that location today (1990).

The outbuildings of the Burton Farm – 1960s.  The hill in the right background is across Route 7 on the Bles property, approximately where the National Automobile Dealers Association and the Rotonda Apartment complex are situated in 1989.

When Edward Carr began assembling land in that area, one local paper optimistically predicted that “Springfield will eventually contain over 5,000 homes, four schools, a huge shopping center and possibly and industry or two.”  (1960s)

Established in 1882, the Fairfax Herald was printed on a hand-operated press in the building shown here.  During the next ninety years, the Herald was an influential factor in the political, economic, and cultural life of Fairfax County.  (1992)

"The Roots of Urban Sprawl" uses a combination of text and photography to document the dramatic changes experienced by Fairfax County, Virginia. This area, which was primarily rural in nature as recently as forty years ago, is now a populous suburb of Washington DC. Each photograph shows present day Fairfax County and is juxtaposed with text descriptions of the same area, as it used to be, from Fairfax County history books.