Subdivisions Impose Social Divide

That sense is exacerbated by the fact that it can take 10 minutes to pull out of her driveway because of the traffic. Sometimes she walks through the new subdivisions, where people, who are friendly enough, wave at her as if she's a visitor from a foreign land. Then there is all the talk about the "new Gainesville."

"There is the new Gainesville and there is the old Gainesville," Siler said. "So, does that mean I don't exist?"

Down Linton Hall Road, Cornelius Ennis, 74, has posted "No Trespassing" signs in his driveway because people are constantly peeling into it to turn around, spewing gravel onto his living room windows. "It's not our community anymore," he said.

Not too far away, the residents along Catharpin Road, adjacent to Heritage Hunt, Piedmont and other large developments, have given their row of brick homes a name.

"We call ourselves the Strip," said Belinda Hess, 36, who has lived there seven years. "It feels different. I feel -- small."

In eastern Prince William, Anthony Mullins, who lives in a neighborhood built in the 1960s on a small hill in Woodbridge, is struggling with the effects of the changing geography.

"We're like an island," said Mullins, 42. "An island in dirt."

His back yard, which used to overlook trees, now overlooks a vast, dusty, denuded valley where a subdivision called Eagle's Point is being built. With no trees, the sun is brighter these days and the wind so stiff that once it blew over his weight-lifting bench.

Across the street, James Kline, 62, noted that a way into the neighborhood is being sealed off because of increased traffic.

"We've been here all these years, but they're the ones who are going to benefit," he said, referring to new residents. "They're isolating us. They're penalizing us. The way they treat us now, I guess they call us white trash."

In Loudoun, Theresa Peer, 54, lives in a disappearing place called Lenah. Hers is a one-story house at the end of a long, hilly yard on the edge of the landscaped entrance to Lenah Run, a closed circuit of 4,000-square-foot homes called Brownings, Randalls and Langleys. If she is out of place now, she doesn't exactly mind.

She keeps her front door open and watches her new neighbors as though they were exotic birds.