The spring real-estate market is about to bloom, and some of the most sought-after homes in Arlington are located along Little Falls Road and in the neighborhoods that flank them.

Whether Rock Spring, Yorktown, Williamsburg or East Falls Church, the neighborhoods Little Falls Road traverses are interesting and eclectic. Along the way, you will pass a number of religious buildings and schools (public and private).

Many travel the road, but few know the full sweep of the history of Little Falls Road and those who called it home over multiple centuries. It is a long provenance, and much of the lore has been lost to time.

Some vignettes, many collected from the archives of the Arlington Historical Magazine, will give a flavor of the expansive history.

Before European Arrival

Modern-day Little Falls Road consists of a trio of disconnected segments running from N. Glebe Road at Dittmar Road in a generally southwesterly direction into the city of Falls Church.

The “Little Falls” in the name represents Little Falls of the Potomac, located a half-mile upstream from Chain Bridge and about five miles downstream from the Great Falls. A county-erected marker provides some of the history.

Long before Capt. John Smith and those under his command sailed up the Potomac River in 1608, the area had been inhabited by Native American tribes for up to 10,000 years.

Sometimes relations between those tribes were peaceful, other times they wer not.

In good times, the abundant fishing resources were shared among tribes, and the Little Falls area became a key trading post. In times of warfare, it was a key objective both for military and economic reasons.

In Colonial Times

A map held by the Charlie Clark Center for Local History at Arlington Central Library shows the very limited network of roadways across the local area in the mid-1700s.

Some followed history Native American paths, while others were created by colonists, mostly to move products from farm to market using horses and other beasts of burden.

The mid-18th-century map of Fairfax County — which then included present-day Arlington and Alexandria — shows what is now Little Falls Road as the “Road to the Falls” in roughly the same location as today.

Along its path, it crosses only a few other roads, including Little Falls Rolling Road (which connected to Chain Bridge), the Road from Leesburg (today’s Route 7) and the Road from Alexandria to the Ferry.

The map also shows those who owned land along the Little Falls Rolling Road route in 1760s, including William Hardin, Nathaniel Chapman, Gerard Alexander, George Mercer and William Adams.

Another property owner was John Ball, whose family later would give its name to today’s Ballston.

A Town That Never Was

Unlike many Virginia counties, modern-day Arlington is prohibited from having any semi-autonomous towns within its boundaries. But no such prohibition existed from colonial times to the early 20th century.

According to “Chain Bridge: A History of the Bridge and Its Surrounding Territory 1608-1991” by Jim Fearson in the October 1991 Arlington Historical Magazine, Philip Ludwell Lee in 1772 laid out a proposed town of 100 acres in the Little Falls area. The site was slated to be called Philee.

But the plan did not materialize, and Lee — a planter, politician and member of the far-flung Lee family — died in 1775. Following his death, the property was divided between two daughters.

Memorializing Those Enslaved

Expansion of a joint effort by the Arlington Historical Society and Black Heritage Museum of Arlington to memorialize those who were enslaved before and during the Civil War soon will come to the Little Falls Road corridor.

Memorial “stumbling stones” honoring Charlotte, Margaret and George Hyson, who were enslaved by William Minor, will soon be placed at Little Falls Road and N. Harrison Street.

They are three of 15 new stones, across seven sites countywide, that will be installed in the second phase of the stumbling-stone iniative. The first three were placed in late 2023 in front of the Ball-Sellers House, the county’s oldest existing residential structure, in Glencarlyn.

Expansion of the initiative comes after the Arlington Historical Society last year signed a memorandum of understanding with the county government. The government will take the lead in installing the plaques and providing maintenance, while the historical society will decide where they go.

Expanding the initiative will further “the hard work of building a more truthful and unified future,” said Jessica Kaplan, a cochair of the Memorializing the Enslaved in Arlington initiative. She presented an update on the initiative at an early-February meeting of the Arlington County Civic Federation.

There will be more opportunities to expand the stumbling-stone initiative. Research into those enslaved in Arlington, which at the start of the effort identified 1,400 individuals, has now reached more than 4,000, Kaplan said.

Pre-Civil War Era

In a 1957 article for the Arlington Historical Magazine, Eleanor Lee Templeman detailed the history of Falls Grove, the home constructed by Gilbert Venderwerken at the northwest corner of Little Falls and Glebe roads.

Templeman (1907-90) is among the major chroniclers of Arlington history. So with the permission of the Arlington Historical Society, here are her words from 68 years ago about “Falls Grove,” one of the key 19th-century residential dwellings and farms of the Little Falls Road vicinity.

“It was built by Gilbert Vanderwerken at the northwest corner of Little Falls and Glebe Roads. He was a New Yorker of adventurous spirit who had operated a coach line between Mexico City and Veracruz before coming to Georgetown, where he operated a coach line from Aqueduct Bridge to the Navy Yard. This was the forerunner of the Capital Transit Company of Washington.

“To provide pasturage for his horses, Mr. Vanderwerken acquired a large tract in northern Arlington. About 1852, he built the house for the use of his tenant and also as a summer residence for his family. An additional enterprise was the operation of vast stone quarries along the Virginia palisades.

“At the time of the Civil War, he allowed Gen. [Winfield] Hancock to use Falls Grove as an army hospital and the two story carpenter shop as his headquarters, under guarantee that the buildings and fine grove of trees would be protected.

“Both Fort Marcy and Fort Ethan Allen were constructed on the property. Fort Marcy is on the south side of the “Georgetown & Leesburg Turnpike” (McLean Road) above Chain Bridge a few hundred yards beyond the Arlington-Fairfax County line. Fort Ethan Allen is on North Glebe Road just south of its intersection with Military Road.

“It has been acquired by the county for expansion of James Madison (formerly Saegmuller) School; we hope that the earthworks will be preserved as much as possible.

“Between these two forts, on the bank of Pimmit Run, is the site of the bloodless duel between Henry Clay and John Randolph in 1826.”

Civil War Tests Loyalties

A 1975 Arlington Historical Magazine article by John Saegmuller relates tales told to him years before by his grandmother, a member of the Vandenbergh family.

His mother was a young girl living with her family on the family farm, which occupies the current site of the Knights of Columbus at 5115 Little Falls Road.

From the article: “Across Little Falls Road toward the south, was the home of the Minor family, who were Southern sympathizers. They lived about where 27th Street N. and N. Florida Street are now located. The Minors had two daughters, who were the belles of the county.”

As Saegmuller states, the family was notorious for its pro-secession sympathies, but according to lore, the two daughters played host (at various times) to both Union and Confederate troops.

One time, however, they set a trap for Union personnel who had been visiting — against standing orders against doing so — and alerted Confederates to the presence of “Yankees” at the home.

The Union troops escaped just in time, and informed their commander of the incidents. While irked with his personnel for defying the no-fraternization directive, he was irate with the two young women for setting up an ambush.

The commander reportedly gave the family one hour to grab what it could, then burned the house to the ground. Its foundations could still be seen on the parcel during John Saegmuller’s youth, he wrote.

While no troops were injured in that particular incident, local lore says that at least one young Confederate sniper was killed nearby during the war by Union forces, after having been tricked by Union forces into exposing his position.

According to the story, federal troops later saw several of their Confederate counterparts retrieve the apparently lifeless body.

After President Lincoln’s 1865 assassination, federal troops swept through the properties along Little Falls Road, searching for assassin John Wilkes Booth. Booth was headed in the opposite direction, having moved south from D.C. into Maryland.

The Man Behind a Mansion

One of the most iconic properties along Little Falls Road is the one-time home of George Saegmuller.

Located at 5115 Little Falls Road, it since the early 1950s  has been home to Arlington Knights of Columbus Council 2473, a Catholic fraternal organization.

But what of the mansion’s first owner, George Saegmuller?

A native of Germany, Saegmuller (1847-1934) emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 23. Earning his living and accumulating wealth as an inventor and manufacturer of scientific instruments, Saegmuller became active in civic life.

He chaired the county’s Board of Supervisors and at the very end of the 19th century was instrumental in the construction of a new county courthouse.

Around the same time, he advanced the funds for a needed public school, which was named in his honor and opened in 1901.

The two-story wooden school on N. Stafford Street was demolished in 1939 and replaced by James Madison Elementary School, which in the 1970s became Madison Community Center.

Saegmuller’s mansion house was completed in 1903 as a summer retreat and later a full-time residence. It was constructed of bluestone quarried on site and replacing a previous home there.

The architectural style, an Arlington Historical Society report once noted, represented “a Southern influence combined with that of a German castle.”

The mansion comprises 21 rooms totaling just over 3,700 square feet.

A signature stone water tower (retained from the earlier home) replicates a tower found in the walls of Nuremburg, Germany, and in the 1890s provided the first household running water in what then was known as Alexandria County. The earlier home also, in 1894, had the county’s first telephone line.

Saegmuller died in the home on his 87th birthday — Feb. 13, 1934.

Middle-Schoolers Learn Social Niceties

Carol McEwen, a retired Realtor, columnist and longtime Arlington resident, recalled a program held at the Knights of Columbus facility back in the 1980s.

Called the Cotillion and designed for Arlington seventh- and eighth-graders, it involved several sessions on Saturday nights and was a combination of dance lessons and ballroom etiquette-instruction.

McEwen served as a chauffeur for the budding teens, rotating that duty with other mothers.

“The lessons were the cause of great excitement among the girls and probably reluctance among the boys, who were required to wear a suit and tie or at least a suit jacket and tie,” McEwen told ARLnow. “But it gave them all practice in how to conduct themselves at a dance.”

While the middle-school boys brought to participate might have held differing views, “it was quite a special event for the girls, since they wore evening gowns,” McEwen said.

In preparation for the lessons each year, one day annually was anointed ‘Cotillion Day’ at a thrift store on Langston Blvd. Girls could try on donated dresses from previous Cotillion dancers, and select one or two.

After the sessions were over, participants donated their dresses back to the thrift store for next year’s participants. “Recycling at its fanciest,” McEwen said.

Road-Improvement Effort Was a Slow One

Following the Civil War, when what then was known as Alexandria County remained relatively rural, local leaders organized the future Arlington into road-maintenance district.

Money was scarce in Virginia in the decades after the war, and road progress was limited.

“Oyster shells, cinders, crushed stone, gravel — in fact, almost any materials that would reduce the muddy condition of the roads were used to help travel,” wrote Clifton Stoneburner in “Early Roads in Arlington County,” an article in the October 1969 edition of the Arlington Historical Magazine.

“Concern was expressed because there were no suitable means of crossing streams, as most roadways crossed streams at fords,” Stoneburner noted.

It wouldn’t be until the 1930s that major road-improvement efforts were undertaken.

“Looking at the roads of Arlington today [1969], it is hard for those new to the area to realize that as late as 1930, only 34 miles of the county road system were paved,” Stoneburner wrote. “From 1930 to 1935, approximately 90 miles received new pavements for the first time.”

Change would come, but not until residential development necessitated it, Stonburner wrote:

“In 1935, the county maps show that the western part of the county, the area west of Four Mile Run from Falls Church to Alexandria had just one subdivision — Glencarlyn — and little of the northern part of the county was touched by development. As the automobile came into more general use, as roads improved and with the growth of the sewer-water system, the population grew more rapidly, resulting in the development of the entire county.”

In 1938, the county government began undertaking a more methodical planning of its thoroughfares (ultimately in conjunction with the Virginia Department of Highways & Transportation, today’s VDOT). Three years later, a thoroughfare plan was adopted, Stoneburner wrote.

Need for Speed Could Lead to Jail

The archives at Arlington Central Library include a clipping of the new traffic regulations that went into effect in 1919, impacting Little Falls Road and every other jurisdiction in Virginia.

The speed limit on most roads was capped at 18 mph. Outside built-up areas, it was 22 mph. On bridges with wood flooring, it was 12 mph.

The 1919 revisions also took away discretion from police officers or sheriff’s deputies about speeders. The new rules required law-enforcement personnel to formally arrest anyone violating the new speed limits, although “arrest” generally meant giving a citation.

The penalties? A $5 fine for the first offense, $10 to $100 and possible jail time for the second. For the third and subsequent offenses, the fine was $50 to $250 plus up to six months in a state workhouse.

Surviving Street-Renaming Effort

According to an article in the October 1959 Arlington Historical Magazine by C.L. Kinnier, Little Falls Road was among those relatively few that survived the mass renaming of many other Arlington streets in 1932-35.

That same overhaul brought the county its current street-naming structure, with numbers for many east-west streets and names (running alphabetically) for north-south ones.

It also introduced the concept of “North” and “South” to street addresses, with Lee Blvd (now known as Arlington Blvd) the dividing line.

Other survivors of the road-naming modernization included Wilson Blvd., Lorcom Lane, Dittmar Road, Military Road, Kirkwood Road, Carlin Springs Road, Vacation Lane and Pershing Drive.

The street-renaming effort emanated from the efforts of a 12-member Arlington County Civic Federation Committee. In November 1932, the panel sent a single-spaced, four-page typed, legal-sized treatise to county-government officials, explaining its desire for a countywide revamp of the archaic road-naming.

“The stranger entering Rosslyn, Falls Church, the airport or any other section of the county was absolutely helpless if he tried to locate any particular street or section of the inner reaches of Arlington,” members of the committee wrote.

Even many Arlington residents, when asked to give directions to a specific location, couldn’t do so.

Backers of the name-rationalization proposal knew many would wish to stick with the status quo.

“There will be criticism. Lots of it,” the committee wrote to county officials.

But, they predicted, time would prove it to be the right approach.

“For every person who criticizes today, there will be 50 who will offer commendation tomorrow when residents of our county fully understand what advantages this plan would bring.”

Perhaps. But even decades later, the supposedly improved road-naming system had not won everyone over.

Steve Vogel, a columnist for the Journal Newspapers, delivered a rhetorical broadside against it in 1986, decrying the county’s supposedly rational road naming as “meaningless” to those trying to learn its intricacies.

He used the example of 26th Road. There were, Vogel noted, eight different ones of those in the county. Or, depending on one’s point of view, eight different unconnected stretches of a single road.

Such criticisms may have been one reason that a proposal from the public to have the county government mark the 75th and subsequent milestone anniversaries of the 1932-34 renaming with special commemorations all fell on deaf ears.

Want to Live There?

A search of Realtor.com and Zillow.com found a limited but interesting selection of homes on the mark in mid-February on and close to Little Falls Road.

Among them were a number of existing homes, including a 5,008-square-foot, Tudor-style home at 5514 Little Falls constructed in 1987.

Located on almost a quarter acre, the home was listed at $1.85 million.

Other opportunities represented new construction, including an offering from Touchstone Homes at 5225 Little Falls Road.

Featuring 6,826 square feet of interior space and set on just over a quarter acre, the property was on the market for $2,599,900.

Cherry Hill Custom Homes is responsible for the new property at 6200 31st Street N., not far from Little Falls. With 5,814 square feet of interior space and set on just under one-fifth of an acre, the property is listed at $2,700,000.

Special thanks to the Charlie Clark Center for Local History at Arlington Central Library for assistance in the research for this article.