Historic Road Yields to the New

Biologist Tom Lovejoy lives a bit further west on the Pike in McLean, at a house called Drover's Rest. He says it took him 30 seconds to fall in love with it when he first saw it in 1975.

The cozy 1730 house, with its seven-foot ceilings and interior walls of logs and chinking, was once a hospitable stopover for drovers -- those who led their livestock along the pike. Messages were tacked to the wall along the front porch, in the hopes others passing through would deliver them to the appropriate person.

Today, Lovejoy has created an oasis of serenity on his two-acre property, a place where "the tension just rolls away."

A man-made waterfall, which feeds into a pond stocked with koi, helps drown out the sound of cars along the Pike. Bluebird boxes and winding paths through flower and vegetable gardens complete the setting.

While Lovejoy's niche along the Pike is protected from development by surrounding parkland, he has watched 177 acres of woodland nearby become one of the region's priciest luxury developments, the Reserve. However, the developers, working with local citizens' associations, diverted some traffic from the Pike by installing a gate in the middle of the property so that cut-through traffic from Old Dominion Drive is minimized. Additional roadside trees for screening are planned.

"You can't shut it [development] out," Lovejoy said, "but you can modify it."

A Pike of Parks

A longtime landmark, now vacant and deteriorating, is the pink house butting up against Georgetown Pike at the corner of Swinks Mill Road. Built in 1878, it was the home of Elizabeth Miles Cooke, one of the Pike's most notable watchdogs, from 1955 until her death in 1999 at age 91.

In 1968, Cooke and another Pike resident, lawyer John Adams, noticed a small sign heralding development of the then-320-acre Burling property across the road from her house. They waged a two-year battle, ferreting out $3 million in grants and donations to purchase the property, which is now part of the Scotts Run Nature Preserve.

"That was the linchpin that started the whole idea of saving the road," said Adams, now president of the Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association. If developed as allowed by zoning then, he said, the Burling tract would have held 320 houses.

Through citizen efforts, there are now 12 parks along the road, including the wooded paths of Difficult Run Trail and Scotts Run Nature Preserve that meander past streams and waterfalls. A new two-acre playground with a central carousel is part of Clemyjontri, an 18-acre park at the eastern end of the pike. When completed this summer, the park will be a barrier-free recreation area accessible to people with disabilities.

Observatory Park, formerly the Turner dairy farm, is a haven for stargazers who gather on Friday evenings to learn from astronomy enthusiasts eager to share their knowledge and their telescopes.

In 1972, Georgetown Pike was designated as Virginia's first scenic and historic byway. Rural rather than urban design standards apply, but the rules are vague.