The Washington & Old Dominion Trail’s history as a rail line was on full display yesterday (Monday) during the latest 50th anniversary celebration organized by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NOVA Parks).
After listening to local elected leaders, park officials and advocates reflect on the trail’s importance to the region, ceremony attendees could pore over old photographs of train stations and touch a rusted railroad spike, just steps from where the W&OD tracks once ran through the heart of the Town of Vienna.
The documents and artifacts laid out under a tent near the restored Red Caboose in Vienna’s Centennial Park represents a sampling of the historical treasure trove that will now be available for perusing by the general public, thanks to a donation from NOVA Parks to Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL).
The donated materials constitute the largest collection of W&OD Railroad artifacts in existence, including more than 2,000 photos and 2,000 other original documents, such as railroad schedules, tickets and memos from 184 to 1968, according to NOVA Parks.
All of the items will be catalogued and preserved by FCPL’s Virginia Room, which collects historical records, books, maps and other resources for researchers and can be found in the City of Fairfax Regional Library.
“We’re really honored and thrilled to be able to actually preserve this collection for perpetuity and make it accessible to everyone,” Virginia Room archivist Chris Barbuschak said. “We’re just really excited about that, and we’re really grateful that NOVA Parks chose us to be the custodians and stewards of this collection for future generations.”
From rails to trails
Many objects in the collection might’ve been lost forever without the meticulous work of NOVA Parks historian and longtime W&OD Trail manager Paul McCray, who helped lead the regional park authority’s efforts to maintain a record of the trail’s past as a critical route for travel and commerce.
Spanning 45 miles from Arlington to Purcellville, the paved trail follows the same path as the Washington & Old Dominion Railway that once connected Alexandria’s seaport with inland communities to the west, giving rise to economic hubs like the towns of Vienna and Herndon.
When the rail line went bankrupt in 1968, the route’s transformation into a pedestrian and cycling facility wasn’t guaranteed, according to Barbara Hildreth, a Vienna resident and former NOVA Parks board member.
Known as the “Mother of the W&OD Trail,” Hildreth recalled at yesterday’s 50th anniversary celebration how she rallied support among community members and lawmakers for her vision of a continuous, multi-use trail, despite opposition from at least one area supervisor who insisted the right-of-way should be devoted exclusively to an express bus route for commuters.
Eventually, Hildreth prevailed. NOVA Parks purchased the land for around $4 million from the electric company that had acquired it from the shuttered W&OD Railroad. The trail’s initial 1.5-mile-long segment hosted its first ride on Sept. 7, 1974 in Falls Church, where the milestone was celebrated last month.
Though NOVA Parks owns and manages the trail, the safety and maintenance of what has become one of the region’s defining landmarks depends heavily on the stewardship of individuals and community groups, Hildreth observed.
“The W&OD Trail is the quintessential people’s project,” she said.
Piecing together the W&OD Railroad’s history
Documenting the W&OD’s history as both a rail line and a trail has similarly been a collective undertaking, according to McCray.
He began researching the railroad’s history by reading books and going through library archives, but many of the photos that NOVA Parks accumulated over the years came from community members who loaned their personal collections.
“We have very few original photos,” McCray told FFXnow. “Maybe 10% of the collection [is] original. The rest are copies, negative prints, in some cases, scans — high-resolution scans — but we’re preserving it, so now it’ll always be available.”
After he began digging through NOVA Parks’ archives in preparation for the trail’s 50th anniversary, McCray approached the board of directors about a year ago to suggest giving files on the defunct railroad to Fairfax County’s library system, which is better equipped to organize them and make them accessible to the public.
With the board’s approval, the historian proposed the donation to Barbuschak, who says he practically “fell out of my chair” in his eagerness to accept the offer.
Though the collection is still being processed, some notable finds have already emerged. Barbuschak was “blown away” by a photo of a former W&OD train trolley that got converted into a diner near Warrenton, and McCray says he especially enjoyed collecting photos of railroad workers, people whose identities are likely forgotten outside any surviving descendants.
“They’ll see photos of stations that haven’t existed for, in some cases, 100 years,” McCray said when asked what people might find in the collection. “They’ll learn a lot about the people that ran the trains. We have a lot of records from the original documents about the station agents, the conductors, the train drivers, and we have a lot of their photos too.”
The trail’s next stage of evolution
NOVA Parks kicked off its 50-year celebration of the W&OD Trail in April with a trail-wide cleanup event.
While yesterday’s ceremony mostly focused on the trail’s first half-decade of existence, NOVA Parks Vice Chairman Paul Baldino confirmed plans are moving full steam ahead to expand the “dual trails” that debuted in Falls Church in 2021.
Segments in Vienna, Herndon, Reston and Arlington have been targeted for conversion into separate lanes for bicyclists and pedestrians. No firm timeline for the Fairfax County projects has been established, NVTA says, but the authority’s strategic plan proposes starting design in 2027.
“As the trail has become more popular, there are conflicts between some of the folks that use it for riding bicycles faster and those that are walking or maybe going at a little slower pace, so I think it does make sense to look to see how the trail can be as inclusive as possible and safe,” said Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn, whose district is bisected by the W&OD Trail.
Vienna Mayor Linda Colbert also expressed hope that the dual-trail design will reduce conflicts between different kinds of users. Many challenges still need to be resolved, though, from parking and utility impacts to the limited availability of space for a wider trail in some parts of the town.
Still, she’s confident that the town and NOVA Parks will make the dual trails work, building on an amenity that will likely prove as foundational to Vienna’s future as it was to its past.
“I’m thrilled that they chose Vienna to hold the [50th anniversary] celebration,” Colbert said. “The trail is a treasure for Vienna residents and for people going through Vienna, of course. So, it’s a wonderful thing to celebrate and to remember its history.”
