Little River Turnpike (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Little River Turnpike:
The earliest private turnpike charter in Virginia was granted by the General Assembly to the Company of the Fairfax and Loudoun Turnpike Road in 1796. By 1806 the 34-mile-long road connected Alexandria with Aldie on the Little River in Loudoun County. The company placed wooden tollhouses along the road at five-mile intervals, and one stood near here until 1954. The Little River Turnpike became a free road in 1896. In Fairfax County, only this portion of the road in Annandale retains its original name.

Marker Erected 1992 by Department of Historic Resources. (Marker Number T-41.)


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

Marker can’t be seen from Little River Turnpike eastbound, and you would probably miss unless the traffic light turns red westbound.

Tablet on Ground Beside Marker:
“Placed in 1992 by the Annandale Central Business District Planning Committee, Inc. with the cooperation of the Fairfax County History Commission.”

This small shady park with plenty of benches is across the street from the marker.


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

Here follows an excerpt from the story, "Before the Hot Lanes: Little River Turnpike" as written by Michael McDonnell, the manager of Hidden Oaks Nature Center.

The Annandale Toll House stood on the south-eastern corner of Little River Turnpike and Ravensworth Road where Han Gang Restaurant is now.

At Hidden Oaks Nature Center we have a wonderful “porous paver” parking lot with a rain garden. This diverts polluted run-off from vehicles away from the local forest. When designing this lot, the county had to also consider accessibility, since canes, walkers, and certain wheelchairs have a more difficult time with porous surfaces. The solution then is two centuries old and the scourge of many environmentalists and folk song writers – asphalt! Thus we have the rain garden. In our case we slightly inclined the asphalt so run-off from cars drains into either the rain garden or the scrubbing filters and pipes underneath. Asphalt, tarmac, blacktop, or paving, by any name was for many years considered the saving grace of rural economies and therefore struggling young countries.

Did you ever wonder why a road through the heart of Annandale is named for a river nearly 30 miles west in Aldie, Virginia? A wonderful aspect of this story illustrates how some situations several hundred years ago have remained the same or have exact parallels today!

Three major wagon roads were evolving for agricultural trade and migration in mid-eighteenth century northern Virginia: the Potomac Path, (today part of Route 1 to Fredericksburg); the nascent Leesburg Pike, (now Route 7 from Alexandria to Leesburg); and, the Philadelphia Wagon Road, tying German-speaking western Pennsylvania and Maryland families migrating into the fertile Shenandoah Valley, (now seen as routes 11 and 81).

In 1772, local Virginians petitioned for funds from the House of Burgesses for the Fredericksburg Road. The House rejected the proposal and recommended that local counties take over responsibility. Does this battle sound familiar? But something was changing in Virginia. By 1775, of the twenty listed mercantile firms in Alexandria – the wealthy regional trade center and river port – only three were exclusively dealing with tobacco. This agricultural shift meant changes in the Virginia landscape as well. Plantations needed rivers for tobacco. However, “inner” plantations – soon-to-be-smaller farms – had discovered that tobacco was very hard on the soil and they began the switch to wheat and other grains, which required wagon transport to mills and central shipping areas, rather than the larger plantations’ river routes.

Responsibility for the roads had returned to the Commonwealth by 1785 but, at a loss for funding, Virginia authorized private companies to set up toll gates. The tolls were used to pay for road improvement, eerily matching today’s beltway Express (H.O.T.) lanes and the Greenway projects. This change is recorded in city newspapers as distant as Baltimore, where a 1793 newspaper advertised a mill for sale, located a mile from Alexandria and, “within call of the Turnpike Road down which all the wheat, from extensive and fertile country, intended for the Alexandria Market, is conveyed.” By 1795, the first commission was granted to a group to actually rebuild roads with privately raised capital. That was the Fairfax and Loudoun Turnpike Road Company, which set about building what is today Route 236.

Stock sales for this new company took place from Alexandria to Blue Ridge; some stock advertisements were printed in German for the Shenandoah Valley residents. Not surprisingly, most if not all the commissioners owned homes and/or land along the route into the mountains. Although this company ended up in failure, they reorganized to become the Little River Turnpike Company in 1801, since so great was the desire to have passable transportation from the breadbasket of Virginia - the western farms into Alexandria. Investing partners included Richard Bland Lee, Northern Virginia’s first congressman and builder of Sully Plantation, located adjacent to the planned route in Chantilly. (It is open to visitors and a fun trip for the family).

Most of the property issues involved in building the road were resolved through laws of eminent domain. Virginia also confiscated building material from forests, farms, and quarries along the entire route. The turnpike laws required roads to be 60 feet across and an 18 foot-wide swath be covered with gravel or stone. Only then could the company set up toll houses and gates. Parallel to today’s arguments over Metro funding, there were some tricky border issues in 1801 as well as a shortage in private funding. By 1804 Virginia purchased most stock shares to keep the company from foundering making it privately run but government subsidized. Still seems familiar, doesn’t it?

By 1806 the Little River Turnpike extended 10 miles, with 2 toll gates, and had collected $787 in tolls. It ran from Alexandria past John Moss’ Green Spring Farm (today’s Green Spring Gardens) through Annandale and into the town of Providence, later named Fairfax. In 1812 the company recorded 35 miles of road, 7 gates and, by 1818, $30,000 in tolls; quite a profitable sum. An 1826 letter refers to Aldie, where a flour mill had been built on the Little River, and where the road forked into the Snickers Gap Pike to Berryville. The letter notes the turnpike as a, “busy road full of wagons morning and night.” Some folks counted at least a hundred per day. Another letter refers to the, “Roughest pavement I was ever on… paved all the way to Alexandria…not a bad policy to have one’s life and limbs insured before undertaking the trip.”

Now remember these weren’t the asphalt ribbons we see today! By 1827, letters display a hue and cry to use the “M’Adam plan” on the road, referencing Scotsman John Loudon McAdam’s method of using smaller stone crushed into larger stone atop a leveled but natural landscape surface. This method digressed from earlier road construction which required much large “boulder” rock as the first layer. Wide-wheeled wagons paid no tolls on “macadamized” roads, since the wider iron wheels helped to pack the road down. Today’s asphalted roads, trails and runways are often actually an engineered stone surface that has been bound with tar spray – thus the origin of “tarmac”.

Alexandria’s wealth started declining by the 1820’s. Many merchants were dealing with Philadelphia directly for overseas shipping and transport. However, the Little River Turnpike still was in use, and soon there rose a new American middle class, with expendable wealth, nascent “vacations” to western “baths”, and scenic trips to de rigor destinations such as Thomas Jefferson’s Natural Bridge. Road traffic for Greenbrier, Monroe, Bath, and Alleghany Counties all picked up in the Commonwealth, and 1835 records note nearly 15,000 annual tourists used the turnpikes, canals, railroads, and stage connections.

However the rollercoaster of economic dependence took its toll on tolls, and by the mid-19th century unstable dollars, farm depressions, high maintenance, and of course the American Civil War prompted citizens to avoid the now poorly-kept “shunpikes” and by 1896 Virginia had to take complete possession of most turnpikes. That is until the Greenway! And so it goes round again. Except this time we know more about consequences. When we lay asphalt, we try to do it with a thoughtful eye towards pollution mitigation, so all of that oil and antifreeze that washes off the cars doesn’t end up in our streams. We don’t want to pave paradise, but sometimes we still need the parking lot.


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

Here follows an excerpt from the "Virginia Places" blog about the early colonial use of the road:

In Virginia, Little River Turnpike (Route 236 from Alexandria to Jermantown west of the City of Fairfax, and then US 50 west to the Bull Run Mountains) is often credited with being the second turnpike in America.

George Washington managed to get American forces west from Alexandria to Winchester in the 1750's during the French and Indian War. General Braddock chose to take his troops across the Potomac River and march through Maryland, since the roads to Frederick and Cumberland were better there.

Braddock built "Braddock's Road" west of Cumberland. His troops did not construct a "Braddock's Road" through the Virginia countryside to the Blue Ridge. Farmers struggled to carry crops by wagon on dirt paths to Alexandria, where the prices were highest because of the increased demand at the port city.

After the American Revolution, merchants and landowners in Northern Virginia recognized the economic benefits from improving the transportation network connecting Alexandria to the backcountry. However, the first attempt to raise private capital to build a new road west of Alexandria ended in failure. The Fairfax and Loudoun Turnpike Road Company was authorized to raise money in 1795, but the corporation was reorganized in 1801 as the Little River Turnpike Company in 1801.


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

Here follows an excerpt from "RAVENSWORTH: A Short History Of Annandale, Virginia" as written by Audrey B. Capone in 1985:

Annandale is unique in that its history can be traced directly to the pre-Revolutionary period, when, in 1685, an Englishman by the name of Col. William H. Fitzhugh purchased over 24,000 acres of land and his descendants later named the tract "Ravensworth." From an untamed wilderness, Fitzhugh converted the land into one of the largest tobacco plantations in Northern Virginia.

For over six generations, members of the Fitzhugh family farmed at Ravensworth, slowly selling off portions of the land. It was not until 1830 that the plantation name was no longer used. In its place the community was named Annandale, after the Scottish village located at the mouth of the Annan River.

Fitzhugh's Ravensworth:
Beginning in 1650, the Virginia government at Jamestown granted large parcels of land to homesteaders and speculators in Northern Virginia. William Fitzhugh, son of an English middle class woolen draper, purchased what he believed to be 21,996 acres of land from John Matthews, an original Jamestown grantee. Matthews and Fitzhugh both believed the stated acreage to be accurate, and it was not until later that Fitzhugh discovered the discrepancy in his favor.

The first recorded mention of Ravensworth was as follows: "to a white oak where Ravensworth and West, Harrison and Pearson join near the back lick." The "back lick" in this property description is a reference to Backlick Run, which travels throughout the property; West, Harrison and Pearson were Colonial landowners whose land bordered the Ravensworth tract.

Ravensworth was the largest single parcel of land granted in Northern Virginia. It was shaped like an axe, with the handle located on the southern end and the blade pointing west. Its shape was no mere coincidence. The land had been surveyed to include easy access to the Accotink drainage basin via a road bed that would later become Backlick Road. Because inland property was only valuable if crops could be easily transported to a waterway, Ravensworth was shaped in a manner that was highly valuable to its owner. It indicates that Samuel Wye, the Stafford County surveyor who mapped the property, had an educated knowledge of waterways in the area, and that he realized that tobacco, the most common commodity in seventeenth-century Virginia, had to be packed in heavy hogshead casks and "rolled" to the waterways.

There is evidence that Fitzhugh advertised some of his property for sale or lease on at least two occasions. In one piece of correspondence, he mentions that he had "convenient and good Land enough to seat 140 to 200 fam'lys upon one Dividend wch [sic] contains 21,996 acres, which I will either sell them in fee at 17 [pounds] sterling for every hundred acres, or else lease it to them for three lives paying 20 shillings p. annum for every hundred acres... "

As early as 1686, Fitzhugh mentions his property as "my Plantation," thereby indicating cultivation of the land very soon after he purchased the tract. But one of the stated requirements for taking firm title to a Colonial land patent was that the landholder had to "seat and plant" on his land within a three-year period, and that the land had to be inhabited. Rarely did holders of large tracts personally tend to the land, and Fitzhugh was no exception. He was responsible for bringing some of the first African slaves to Ravensworth and hired overseers to manage the workers and to live on the property.

Among those who leased property from Fitzhugh were French Huguenots, who had fled their native land to avoid religious persecution. But these early pioneers found living conditions at Ravensworth very primitive. Housing consisted of little more than wooden huts, and the threat of attack by unfriendly Indians, combined with the presence of wild buffalo, bands of wolves and other wild animals, put their lives in jeopardy. Some tenants left the land to journey to more heavily populated areas, usually near the waterways.

Col. Fitzhugh never lived at Ravensworth. Shortly after arriving in America, he married and built a beautiful home he called "Eagles Nest" in King George County. He resided there until his death in 1701.

At the time of his death, Fitzhugh had amassed a fortune -- partly due to the success of his plantation, but also due to a lucrative legal practice and the acquisition of other property in Northern Virginia. He was an attorney educated in England and distinguished himself as a member of the Stafford County Court and as commander of the Stafford County militia. At the time of his death he owned some 54,000 acres of land.

Fitzhugh's Successors:
Upon the death of Col. William H. Fitzhugh, the Ravensworth plantation was left to his two eldest sons, William, Jr. and Henry. William, Jr. inherited the southern portion of the estate, and Henry inherited the northern portion -- which included all of the land that is now Annandale.

The southern half of Ravensworth Plantation ultimately came to rest with the children of Mary Randolph Custis Lee -- wife of the Confederate general -- who was the niece of William Fitzhugh, III. As late as 1915, Col. Bob Lee lived in the mansion called "Ravensworth," but much of the acreage in the southern half of the plantation had been sold to others.,

The northern half of the plantation came to rest with Anna Maria Battaile Fitzhugh and her five sons. When the sons became of age, the land was again divided.

The Ravensworth Mansions:
Oak Hill, Ossian Hall and Ravensworth

Three great homes were built at Ravensworth during the eighteenth century, one of which still stands as a monument to the past.

In 1779, Major Henry Fitzhugh built "Oak Hill" for his land agent, Lund Washington. At the time of construction, the home consisted of only four huge rooms, two on each floor. It was not until 1936 that the home was refurbished and expanded to resemble another of the Ravensworth mansions, "Ossian Hall." Oak Hill, the oldest of the three great homes, stands majestically on a plot of land of approximately four acres. It is privately owned and is located off Wakefield Chapel Road, hidden by trees on every side.

It is believed that Nicholas Fitzhugh, son of Major Henry Fitzhugh, built the second Ravensworth mansion, Ossian Hall, as early as 1783. There is a tradition that Ossian Hall was built in 1730, but no Fitzhughs lived on the property at that time -- the site where it was built was leased to Daniel and William Talbot until long after that date. Further, Ossian Hall was built with a large family in mind, and Nicholas had over twelve children. He was the first Fitzhugh to live on the property.

Ossian Hall faced Braddock Road where Royston Street and Rosslyn Road now intersect. The beautiful home, which resembled Mount Vernon, was visited by many notable persons during Colonial days, including George Mason, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette.

On September 3, 1959, Ossian Hall was burned to the ground by the Annandale Fire Department to make way for the Bristow subdivision.

"Ravensworth," the third Ravensworth mansion, was built in 1796 by William Fitzhugh of Chatham. After the death of Anna Maria Fitzhugh, the family of Robert E. Lee used the mansion as a summer home. When Mrs. Lee fled Arlington House during the Civil War, she stayed at Ravensworth briefly, but fearing that Union troops might harm the lovely old home, she journeyed further south. She need not have worried, because the three Ravensworth mansions were officially protected from harm by orders from the leaders of both sides.

Ravensworth was located slightly southeast of the intersection of Braddock Road and the Capital Beltway. The mansion was mysteriously burned in 1925.

Green Spring Farm:
In addition to the Ravensworth mansions, another beautiful home was built by John Moss during the eighteenth century. Moss, a gentleman freeholder and a leader of the Methodist Church, built "Green Spring Farm" in 1760. Characteristic of the time, Moss worked the land and built the home prior to purchasing the land in 1770.

Moss was the first in the area to turn away from tobacco in favor of dairy, grain and vegetable farming. He distinguished himself as a justice of the Fairfax County Court and served the Crown as Commissioner of the King's Revenue in Fairfax. He was a captain during the American Revolution and took an active part in organizing the new government.

Green Spring Farm is located east of the business district off Little River Turnpike.

The Beginning of Commerce:
The very first businessman to locate in Annandale was William Garges, a Mennonite from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Garges, of German descent, purchased land that included the triangle where Columbia Pike, Little River Turnpike and Backlick Road now join in the center of town. On this land, he placed a blacksmith shop and a livery stable. He also ran the first steam driven saw mill in Fairfax County, located on the bank of the Indian Run at Little River Turnpike. The 1850 census listed two persons from the Garges family engaged in farming and three in manufacturing.

Garges became Annandale's first postmaster in 1837. Post office documents state that "Annandale Post Office was opened for business on 27 December 1837, with William Garges as Postmaster," Documents do not state where the post office was located, but Garges served in this post until his death in 1855.

The Early Community:
In 1806, the Little River Turnpike was completed through Annandale, thereby connecting Annandale with Alexandria and Fairfax. Very shortly after, it was extended to Aldie. Little River Turnpike was the third toll road constructed in the nation. Toll houses were placed at intervals along the long turnpike, one of which was situated where Little River Turnpike intersects with Ravensworth Road. On Thursday, May 23, 1861, this small, log toll booth was used as a voting place for local residents to vote in the matter of Virginia's proposal to secede from the Union. Thirty-three votes were cast; twenty-nine votes for secession.

In 1808, another roadway was built which joined the Little River Turnpike in Annandale. It was named Columbia Pike. Local residents now had at least seven roads on which to travel.

By 1830, the plantation lords were gone. The land had been sectioned and sold to farmers, many of whom had come from the north with a fervor to succeed in farming, and unlike their southern neighbors, without the use of slaves

Skilled and industrious, the northerners brought with them new ways of cultivating and fertilizing crops. They also introduced a new farming technique called crop rotation, which restored the soil and resulted in healthier crops.

Gradually this new breed of farmer gave a fresh vitality to the sleepy community. Plain, but well built farmhouses dotted the countryside. Church meetings began to be held in homes. Picnics and socials followed the Sunday services. More businesses opened near the Garges enterprises, and at least two taverns opened on the outskirts of the community.

On October 1, 1846, William Garges conveyed a small piece of land for the construction of the first church, and the Annandale Methodist Chapel was built. During the Civil War, Union troops camped on the church grounds. As they left town, they burned the small church to the ground. Following the war, another church building was built slightly north of the original site. The church now stands across from where Columbia Pike and Gallows Road meet.

On June 10, 1973, at the dedication service of the Annandale Chapel Historical Marker, Rev. Raymond Fitzhugh Wrenn spoke of the history of Annandale:

"Because this area, so intimately connected with the settlement of this continent, the establishment of the Republic, and its tragic testing in Civil War, has now become an integral part of its metropolitan, growing population, in intensity of affairs, and in the extravagances of wealth, most people have little time to notice or appreciate the past except as it is most vividly portrayed before their speeding gaze."