On Edge of Va. Sprawl, Labels Crumble, New Lives Thrive

Last summer, for instance, Lori Ferrigan and her husband had no particular complaints, she said. They lived with their two daughters in a perfectly lovely house in what she called a "wonderful" neighborhood in Fredericksburg. Lori commuted to Alexandria; Stephen, retired from the United Nations and the British military, stayed home with the kids.

Then Lori became pregnant again, and she began imagining how much better it would be if her two daughters had their own bedrooms, because she had always wanted her own room when she was little -- and what is having a family about if not to give them more than you had. So she started searching.

Although her house had appreciated, Ferrigan could not afford what she wanted in Fredericksburg, so she drove about 20 minutes south into Caroline, until recently a mostly rural, sparsely populated county of farms and pine forests, cement and lumber plants, travel plazas and truck washes, and many Baptist churches. She looked at some older houses first, "and I said, 'This is too far!' " she recalled.

Then she pulled into the just-bricked entrance of the Village at Ladysmith, one of a handful of new developments in the county. It is a mile or so off I-95, a right on Jefferson Davis Highway, just past the Food Lion and Hair Jungle. Bulldozers were scraping off streets named Begonia and Azalea. It had sidewalks, a clock tower and the first of 3,000 close-together Charleston-esque houses with such names as Hemingway and Capote, with front porches and sidewalks, and garages in the back. The rest was a sketch in the welcome center.

Seeing it -- the idea of it anyway -- Ferrigan thought to herself, "This is not that far at all!"

"I wanted the white picket fence," she said. "I wanted it."

And, it turns out, she could have it. She and her husband, who wondered aloud recently whether low interest rates and the housing frenzy are a grand distraction from the national debt and the Iraq war, sold their house in Fredericksburg for $379,000, bought the new one for $340,000 and moved in last July.

In August, Lori Ferrigan installed a shiny white plastic fence, and for now, she said, she feels satisfied. She laughed off the irony that her daughters are now inseparable and will only sleep in the same bedroom.

Her commute up I-95 to Alexandria, where she works in marketing for a nonprofit group, is two hours one way.

"I drive by myself," Ferrigan said. "I like it. You can just think about everything you have to do, everything you have to plan. Unless it's a three-hour [drive], I don't mind it at all."

Others who've moved to Caroline and neighboring King George tell fundamentally similar stories, which are perhaps the best explanation for the growth, notable more for what it portends than for what it actually is: From 2004 to 2005, Caroline's population grew 6.5 percent to 25,563, while neighboring King George grew 6.7 percent to 20,637.

Among that number is Rich Artenian, who left Prince William County, where he worked for the county parks department, for retirement in a new house on four piney, hilly acres in King George. It was not simply where he could afford something; he could afford his house in Woodbridge just fine. It was rather where he could afford what he wanted. He lives there with his companion, Sharon Hartman.