George Washington Air Junction (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the airport used to be. No remains are visible here.


<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>
<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>

Here follows an excerpt from the "Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields" website written by Paul Freeman:

George Washington Air Junction, Alexandria, VA
(Southwest of Reagan National Airport, VA)

In the late 1920s, entrepreneur Henry Woodhouse purchased 1,500 acres of land in Fairfax County in a grandiose plan to transform Hybla Valley's dairy farms into the "George Washington Air Junction", which he planned as Washington’s transatlantic commercial airport. This was envisioned as the largest airport in the world, with a 7,200' runway & mooring fields for transatlantic Zeppelin flights. Woodhouse was convinced that Zeppelins were the future of aviation. The earliest depiction which has been located of the George Washington Air Junction was a 1925 photo of Henry Woodhouse at the dedication of the facility's entrance now on display at the Huntley Meadows Park Visitors Center.

The entrance was presumably located along what is now Lockheed Boulevard, near the entrance to today's Huntley Meadows Park. At the dedication ceremony, one of George Washington's own surveyor pegs was being driven into the ground by Professor Albert Hart, to mark the beginning of the 7,500' runway of the Thousand Acre Airport at the George Washington Air Junction, the longest runway in the world.

Other items on display at the Huntley Meadows Visitor Center include a 1929 aerial photo by Orville Blake looks north at the 3 runways which were cleared on the Air Junction property, just south of what would eventually become Lockheed Boulevard and a map showing the “Washington Air Junction” from an article entitled “Nation's Greatest Air Center” in the 1/1/30 Alexandria Gazette. In addition, an aerial photo looking south at the Air Junction site, annotated with the intended layout of the airport (from the 3/3/38 issue of the Herald Times, from the Fairfax County Library, courtesy of Charlie Davis). The photo depicted a plan for 3 runways (including one 14,000' long, which would have been bizarre for an airport in the 1930s), along with a hangar & an administration building. The article said, “Hybla Valley, largest available airport site near the Capital. Hybla Valley, flat as a table & 3,800 acres in extent, lies 3 miles south of Alexandria, flanked by U.S. Highway #1. On it could be located the largest runways in the world, and it could be converted into the largest airport in the world.”

In spite of its grandiose plans, the Air Junction never went into operation, and there is no indication that any aircraft ever operated from the site. It was never depicted on any government-published aeronautical chart that has been located. Woodhouse eventually lost the land through a combination of defaults, foreclosures, and lawsuits. The Washington Air Terminal Corporation leased the land to dairy farmers until 1941, when the federal government purchased it for $60,000. A 1949 aerial photo no longer showed any trace of the 3 runways which had been depicted in the 1929 aerial photo.

From 1950-59, the VA National Guard's Battery D, 125th Gun Battalion located antiaircraft artillery batteries on a site just to the northwest of the former Air Junction property, as one of 4 batteries which provided air defense coverage for the nation's capital. The battery was manned by 4 officers & 30 enlisted men. In 1958, a site just to the southwest of the Air Junction site was used by the Naval Research Laboratory for the highly classified development of the AN/GRD-6 Direction-Finding Antenna, for which they constructed 2 large circular antenna fields.

When the NRL project wrapped up in 1971, the property was declared surplus by the federal government. In 1975, the Interior Department, under its "Land to Parks" program initiated during the Ford administration, sold 1,261 acres of surplus land (including the former Air Junction site) to Fairfax County for $1. The land was to be used "exclusively for public park or public recreation purposes in perpetuity”, and it became the Huntley Meadows Park.

As seen in the 2002 USGS aerial photo, the site of the George Washington Air Junction has become the Huntley Meadows Park, and not a trace is visible of the 3 runways which were depicted in the 1929 aerial photo. The site of the George Washington Air Junction is located southwest of the intersection of Lockheed Boulevard & Harrison Lane.