Bush Hill Flag Stop (1905-1946) (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the flag stop was located. No visible remains exist. The photograph above is an exact replica of what this flag stop looked like, with the standard Pennsylvania Railroad shelter directly abutting the railroad tracks.

A railroad flag stop is a station where a train will only stop if a passenger waiting on the platform waves a flag or gives a signal to the conductor, essentially requesting the train to stop; this is typically used at lightly used stations where trains wouldn't normally stop unless someone needed to get on or off. Many stations would have a box on the platform or station containing a white or green flag that the passenger would wave at the train. If it was a staffed station, the agent or clerk would flag the train. The conductor of the train would acknowledge they had seen the flag by sounding two short whistles.


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Here follows an excerpt from "The Iron Road of Franconia" book about the railroad written by local historian Nathaniel Lee.

BUSH HILL FLAG STOP: 1905-1946

This railroad line through Fairfax County changed its name several times, which continues to be the cause of much confusion for armchair historians. The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad Company was chartered in 1834, and the line was finished as far as Fredericksburg by 1837. From this point, passengers bound for Washington took a coach to Aquia Creek and then took a steamboat up the river. The line then extended to join the Pennsylvania Railroad's subsidiary line, the Alexandria and Washington Railroad after the Civil War. In 1872, the name was changed to the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad Company. In 1890, the Washington Southern Railway took control of the railroad through Fairfax County, and then folded into the Richmond - Washington Company as a part of the RF&P Railroad in 1920, which is what most people remember. CSX Transportation finally took over operations along the line in 1991. Confused yet? You should be. That's about six name changes over 150 years for the railroad in Fairfax County. Please read the book "The Iron Road of Franconia" for a more detailed explanation of all the changes.

On April 20, 1871, the railroad company condemned nineteen acres of land from Francis M. Gunnell for the railroad right-of-way and a stop called Bush Hill. Bush Hill was not a regular flag stop, but did see use by the Gunnell family. The Bush Hill stop was located on the south side of the tracks, north of what is today Eisenhower Avenue. "The Exchange at Van Dorn" condominiums stand today just to the south, where historical markers relate the history of the Bush Hill home. Access to the stop and the Gunnell farm was via Bush Hill Drive from the south.

The name "Bush Hill" comes from the Gunnell family ancestral home in England, but the Bush Hill home here has a history all its own. Built in 1763 by Alexandria merchant Josiah Watson, it was a beautiful example of Georgian architecture. Union General Oliver O. Howard used the home as his headquarters following the First Battle of Manassas in 1861.

The Richmond-Washington Company incorporated on September 5, 1901 as a holding company owning both the RF&P Railroad and the Washington Southern Railway. Freight traffic over the new Richmond-Washington Line increased quickly, and the train dispatchers running the show from Richmond found that the single track they had was inadequate for the number of trains they wanted to run. The number of trains allowed on a single track at the same time is severely limited because trains cannot run too close to each other without risking a collision. For this reason, they added a second track along the entire line between Richmond and Washington in a process called "double tracking." They also realigned the tracks onto the course they follow to the present day during this four-year construction project between 1903 and 1907. They eliminated or smoothed out sharp curves and reduced hills in grade, including lowering the peak of Franconia Hill underneath Franconia Road by a staggering twenty feet. You can still see this massive cut today by looking down at the railroad from Franconia Road along Fleet Drive. They put almost the entire line of track in a new location between Quantico and Alexandria, all in an effort to speed up transit times along the line.

With this track realignment, the old flag stop for Bush Hill was abandoned in 1905 and moved to this location on the new Washington Southern rail line. It moved a quarter-mile south of its original location onto the south side of the tracks where today "The Exchange at Van Dorn" condominiums stand. Official service to the flag stop was halted temporarily when the federal government began leasing Bush Hill in October of 1942 to house Hitler's defected counselor of foreign affairs, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl during the Second World War. Following the war, the stop operated again for a couple years until the death of Bush Hill owner Leonard Gunnell in 1946. At that point, rail service ended to the historic property ended and the surviving family members divided the property and sold portions to developers. The flag stop had served the family for eighty years. The historic home was a victim of vandals who burned the home to the ground in 1977. The Bush Hill name didn't disappear forever as a small commercial rail spur would carry the name of "Bush Hill" for the warehouses located on Eisenhower Avenue where the house stood.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Fall 2018 edition of the "Franconia Legacies" newsletter published by the Franconia Museum:

Mary Smith, a member of the Museum’s Board of Directors, sat in on the interview of the sisters because of her institutional knowledge of Franconia in its early days. She came up with this gem: Mary’s mother, Evelyn Broders Smith, lived near the Franconia stop and caught the train to attend Alexandria High School. She later was a schoolteacher at Franconia Elementary in the 1930s. Mary’s mother remembered the train being flagged to stop at Bush Hill to pick up Mr. Gunnell. Sometimes, the engineer didn’t get the cars stopped right at the platform, so Mr. Gunnell would insist that the engineer back up the train so he could get on board. The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad ran right in front of the house on land that once was owned by the estate.

“I remember that we would always run toward the tracks when we heard the train coming,” Natalie said, “so we could wave to everyone. The engineer usually had passed by the time we got there to wave, but we always got a wave back from the caboose.”

Railroads had been a part of Bush Hill since the mid-Nineteenth Century when steam locomotives began pulling cars on tracks in America. The Orange and Alexandria Railroad was organized to build a line from Alexandria to Gordonsville, Virginia, in 1850. A right-of-way 80 feet wide on the south side of Backlick Run through the northern part of Bush Hill was obtained for $200.00. The deed included a cattle stop at each end of Bush Hill for use by neighbors, and another in the middle for the property owner. The first train rolled through on an 11-mile trip to Backlick station on July 4, 1851.

Five years later, the Manassas Gap Railroad obtained a right-of-way through Bush Hill parallel to the O&A as part of a system stretching through Manassas and the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. At first, the Manassas Gap used the O&A rails and started work on its own line. Work was halted during the Civil War and never completed.

In 1871, the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad Company condemned 19 acres of Bush Hill for a new line that would eventually connect with the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac (now CSX) at Aquia Harbor, then the northern terminus of the line from Richmond. Travelers from Washington, D.C., and Alexandria took a steamer on the Potomac to Aquia Landing and then went by rail to Richmond. President Lincoln took that route on his trip to Chatham, the estate overlooking the Rappahannock River, in April 1862.

The railroad was reorganized in 1905, and the Bush Hill stop was moved within the gardens in the front of the house. That is the double track alignment shown in the 1937 picture, and the one that Mary and Natalie and their siblings would visit. Their mother was born the same year the railroad was moved.