This is a local history website focused on the area around the Town of Vienna in Fairfax County, Virginia. The website went on-line in 2022, but its impetus dates to 2019. At that time, in preparation for the 50th anniversary of our homeowners association (HOA), I began a project to identify the previous owners of the dozen acres that eventually became the HOA. The Fairfax County History Commission’s map of property owners in 1860, prepared by Beth Mitchell, served as a starting point for determining the lineage of the land until it was subdivided into the form it holds today. With the help of the good people at the Fairfax County Circuit Court Historic Records Center, and some forced idle time from the COVID-19 pandemic, the scope of the project grew to encompass what I characterize as the area “northwest of Northeast Vienna.” A good deal of this area was developed from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, around the same time as our HOA. The history of the area, most of which is just outside the Town of Vienna, is unsurprisingly tied to the history of Vienna itself. Thus the research and subject matter often strayed across the Town line–more and more so, as more time has gone by.

Until 2022, I had posted my articles on Next Door, but as the Next Door website evolved, it became less suitable for my purposes. A tech-savvy friend of 40-plus years steered me to the idea of establishing my own website, and courtesy of his hand-holding, here is “viennavahistory.com.”