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1915 Map of Fairfax

Name: 1915 Topographic Map of Fairfax
Creator: U.S. Geological Survey
Published: 1944
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

USGS Topo · Published 1944

About this map

Fairfax and Manassas serve as the primary hubs in this pre-war survey of Northern Virginia, which depicts a landscape defined by traditional turnpikes and the critical corridors of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad and the Southern Railroad. The map captures the region when small rural settlements like Chantilly, Floris, and Germantown were distinct communities separated by extensive wooded tracts and a dense network of watercourses, including Difficult Run and Bull Run.

Insights into early 20th-century social infrastructure are evident in the placement of the Bear School, Pleasant Valley School, and Lee Chapel. The transportation network is dominated by historic routes such as the Little River Turnpike and Braddock Road, which already linked the growing towns of Vienna and Herndon to the surrounding agricultural countryside before the mid-century expansion of the capital region.