FAIRFAX
The western part of the Braddock District includes Fairfax postal addresses. These communities are next door neighbors to the independent City of Fairfax and share its rich history. This area was first settled in the early-to-mid 1700s. Initially it was part of the Truro Parish, and became a part of Fairfax County when the county was established in 1742.
Following two unsuccessful attempts to establish a Fairfax County courthouse, first near present-day Tysons Corner and then Alexandria, a site was selected at the junction of Ox Road and Little River Turnpike. Completed in 1800, that courthouse remains today as the north wing of the present Fairfax County Courthouse.
Ox Road was originally an Indian trail that was widened in order to gain easier access to copper deposits found in the northern regions of the county. Little River Turnpike was a private venture of the Little River Turnpike Company, which was authorized by the turnpike charter to build and operate, for profit, a road from Alexandria to the ford of the Little River in Aldie, Virginia.
A small village soon grew up around the courthouse and, by an act of the Virginia legislature in 1805; the village was incorporated as the Town of Providence, even though it was generally referred to as Fairfax Court House.
Fairfax was the scene of several notable events during the Civil War. Captain John Quincy Marr, the first officer casualty of the Confederacy, was killed at Fairfax Court House on June 1, 1861. By late 1862, the town was occupied by Union forces commanded by Brigadier General Edwin H. Soughton. In a daring raid led by Confederate Col. John S. Mosby in March 1863, General Soughton was captured while he slept in a house in the present-day rectory of Truro Episcopal Church. During the last days of August 1862, when Confederate troops won a victory on the banks of Bull Run, hundreds of wounded Union and Confederate soldiers were taken to Fairfax Station, where they lay on a hillside under the trees awaiting transportation to hospitals in Fairfax, Alexandria or Washington. Among those who nursed them was a government clerk, Clara Barton. Although she had no official connection with the army, she ministered as best she could to the thousands of wounded men at the historic Saint Mary of Sorrows church on Ox Road.
After 1866, Fairfax and the rest of Northern Virginia set about repairing the ravages of war. The Town of Fairfax continued to serve as the governmental seat of Fairfax County, which had become an area of prosperous farms and estates. The Fairfax area grew during the 1940s and 50s. In 1961, under a charter granted by the Virginia General Assembly, the Town of Fairfax incorporated as an independent city. By agreement in 1965 a 50-acre "county enclave" within the city was established, which included the County Courthouse/Massey Building area.
In the late 1950's the Town of Fairfax sought and won location of a Northern Virginia branch of the University of Virginia on 150 acres of property on Route 123 just south of the town limits. The college was renamed "George Mason." It developed rapidly after the first four buildings were opened in 1964. It was elevated to a four year, degree-granting institution by the Virginia General Assembly in 1966 and given a long-range mandate to expand into a major university. George Mason University is within the boundaries of Braddock District.