Popkins Farm (Site)

These coordinates mark the site where several farm buildings stood until they were demolished circa 1980 to make way for a new housing development. No visible remains exist.


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Here follows an excerpt from the 1970 Fairfax County Master Inventory of Historic Sites which contained entries from the Historic American Buildings Survey Inventory:

Popkins Farm overlooks the Hybla Valley, and was once a 315-acre dairy farm. It operated with as many as sixty cows until 1961. According to its owner, the present complex was built in 1866. The land was once part of the holdings of George Mason of Gunston Hall.

Mrs. Earl Popkins has lived on the farm since the early 1920's when she and Mr. Popkins were married. Mr. Popkins' father, Richard, operated the farm before then.

Although it is no longer a dairy farm and is now only fourteen acres in size, Popkins Farm continues to maintain a rural character. Horses are boarded in the outbuildings which remain.

One of the interesting features of the farm is that it has a New England connected barn. In such an arrangement, it is possible to go from the house to the barn without having to go outside. This is an unusual plan for Fairfax County, where the winters are not as hard as those in New England.

The house is a one-story frame structure which tradition says was built shortly after the Civil War with wood from nearby Fort Lyons. There is another story, however, which says that the original portion of the house was a slave cabin that was part of an earlier farm called "Clifton Lodge," demolished in November 1862. An 1805 insurance policy shows a much more elaborate dwelling, then owned by James Patton.

In either case, the building is architecturally unique for this area. With its barns, sheds, and other outbuildings, and remaining pasture land, Popkins Farm stands as a document of the area when Fairfax County was predominantly rural.