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Runway Airfield Marker Light

GPS Coordinates: 38.8409641, -77.1189429
Closest Address: 3813 South George Mason Drive, Falls Church, VA 22041

Runway Airfield Marker Light

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

Crossroads Airport / Washington-Virginia Airport, Bailey's Crossroads, VA
(Southwest of Washington, DC)

Darren Fox observed in 2004 "some existing evidence of the airfield. There is today, a Burke & Herbert Bank on Seminary Road right next to a Shell station that is at the corner of Seminary & Carling Springs Roads. It turns out that there are 2 sets of 2 marker light on the bank building! The lamps are long since dead, but the red glass beacons are still there today. I personally remember these beacons working when the airfield was in operation as they marked this little building that sat at just outside the airfield property at the end of Runway 11/29!"

A 2004 photo by Darren Fox of the Burke & Herbert Bank building at Seminary Road & Gorham Street, which still has 2 sets of former airfield marker lights on the roof. The 2 towers of the Skyline apartment complex (which were built on the site of the airport) are in the background. Darren Fox has indicated the location of the building which still has the marker lights on the 1968 airfield layout & a vintage photo of the airport, making it obvious why this building needed obstacle lights - it sat directly off the end of the runway!

Darren Fox recalled, "I remembered it seemed that those Cessnas & Pipers would miss those beacons by only a few feet! If memory serves me right, I think that this Burke & Herbert bank was a BP gas station in the last days of the airport. I spoke to my father today, and seem to remember the BP station too."

Barbara Helm reported in 2009, “I recall that at one time there was a room or two dedicated to the former airport in one of the Skyline towers on the bottom floor and a small cafe named for the old airport or some part of it.”

An October 2019 photo by Lawrence Hale of some of the last remnants of Washington-Virginia Airport: the red airport obstruction lights which remain on the top corner of the Coca-Cola plant on Dawes Lane. Lawrence recalled “I was guessing it might still also have airport lights since the plant was a marked hazard on the old airfield diagrams.”

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Award-winning local historian and tour guide in Franconia and the greater Alexandria area of Virginia.

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Nathaniel Lee

c/o Franconia Museum

6121 Franconia Road

Alexandria, VA 22310

franconiahistory@gmail.com

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