The unbroken lineage of the Wedderburn land is remarkable in a county where most longtime land-holding families sold out decades ago to developers.
Indeed, the property is a throwback to an earlier, transformative time for Fairfax, when the rural county began evolving from an "agricultural hinterland to suburb," according to a consultant's report prepared for Elm Street Development Inc. of McLean, which wants to develop the Wedderburn land.
The Wedderburn family's decision to sell Midgetville -- eight overgrown acres along the Washington & Old Dominion trail in Vienna -- has sparked an emotional battle.
(Dayna Smith - The Washington Post)
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Wedderburn, who eventually owned about 300 acres in and around today's Vienna, used the land now known as Midgetville for summer fairs for area farmers. A hotel and several cabins were already on the property when he purchased it. Along the north side of the Wedderburn property ran the Washington, Ohio and Western Railroad, which extended from Alexandria through Fairfax County, stopping at Wedderburn station along the way.
In the late 19th century, Fairfax was attracting increasing numbers of urban dwellers, who rode the rail line out to the bucolic county to escape the noisy, crowded District. Attracted by the clean air and green spaces, they stayed at the various resorts that dotted the railroad line. Wealthy Washington businessmen began building summer homes there.
With their cottages and hotel, the Wedderburn family catered to summertime clientele. Alexander Wedderburn even drew up plans to subdivide some of his land into 79 small lots for a community called Wedderburn Heights. He filed those plans with the county, although they never reached fruition.
The hotel burned down in 1901, according to historical accounts. But a two-story stucco home built on the property around the turn of the century is still there today, barely visible behind a wall of greenery to passing bicycle riders along the W&OD trail.
The property was passed down through the Wedderburn family. In the 1930s, one of Alexander Wedderburn's sons, George, built six small, one-story Spanish-style rental cottages that still stand. According to family lore, he furnished them with pianos because he loved music.
Polly Wedderburn Nixon, daughter of Alexander's son Augustus, inherited the property in 1944. When Nixon died in 1995, it passed to her four daughters -- Jane Nixon Leppin, Eloise Nixon Jones, Nan Nixon and Pollyanne Marcieski.
The property has been virtually unchanged for decades. A dozen small dwellings -- half of them tumbledown and uninhabited -- nestle under a towering canopy of trees.
Jane Leppin lives in one of the cottages, and one of her daughters, Janel Wedderburn Leppin, occupies another. The family rents out several others to artists, musicians and coffee-shop workers.
But Jane Leppin said that ownership of the land became increasingly difficult over the years because of mounting property taxes, vandals and the rising cost of upkeep on the dwellings.
In fact, the family dislikes the "Midgetville" nickname because for decades the legend of the area has attracted teenage "midget hunters" who invade the property late at night to race their cars along the narrow dirt road encircling the compound, honking their horns and throwing bottles, eggs and other trash at the homes.
Once, a rock crashed through her mother's window, Leppin said, just missing the elderly woman.
Years ago, she said, Polly Nixon began exploring selling the land and sought the advice of Fairfax developer John T. "Til" Hazel. He urged Nixon to sell the land as quickly as possible, said Leppin. Otherwise, she said, Hazel warned that "everybody who moves in around you will think that your trees are their trees, and the longer you are there, the more they will insist that the trees stay."
