Qualla: Arlington County, Virginia

Arlington County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ERM1130, CC BY-SA 4.0. Arlington County is small enough to walk across. At 26 square miles, it is the smallest self-governing county in the United States by area. It contains, in that small space, the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery, the Marine Corps War Memorial, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the southern half of three Potomac River bridges, the headquarters of Amazon's second headquarters, several billion dollars of federal contracting offices, two major Metro corridors, a two-century-old plantation house that became the cemetery, and about 240,000 residents whose median household income is among the highest in the country. There is no city government in Arlington. The whole county functions as a unified jurisdiction governed by a five-member board. Most of it was originally part of Washington, D.C. - which is why it has the same name as the cemetery and the same street grid as the capital across the river.

Image: ERM1130 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Arlington County, Virginia: The Retroceded Square

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Fitzgerald, CC BY 3.0. When Congress established the District of Columbia in 1790, the federal district included a sizable chunk of Virginia on the south bank of the Potomac. The Virginia portion - what is now Arlington County and the City of Alexandria - had been part of Fairfax County since 1742. Fro...

Image: Peter Fitzgerald | CC BY 3.0

Arlington County, Virginia: From Plantation to Cemetery

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Protoant, Public domain. George Washington Parke Custis - George Washington's step-grandson - inherited 18,000 acres and built Arlington House on the heights above the Potomac in the early 1800s. He owned about 200 enslaved people across his Virginia properties. When his daughter Mary Anna Custis married...

Image: Protoant | Public domain

Arlington County, Virginia: Desegregation Before Massive Resistance Lost

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arlington County, CC BY-SA 2.0. Arlington County in the 1950s was Virginia. It had Jim Crow segregation laws like the rest of the state, racially separate schools, and Senator Harry F. Byrd's Massive Resistance campaign actively opposed integration even after Brown v. Board of Education ordered it. In Arlington...

Image: Arlington County | CC BY-SA 2.0

Arlington County, Virginia: The Metro Corridors

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The decisions that defined modern Arlington were made in the 1960s and 1970s, when the county government insisted that the new Washington Metrorail system put its Orange and Silver Line stations directly under the urban corridors of Rosslyn, Court House, Clarendon, Virginia Squar...

Image: Ben Schumin | CC BY-SA 3.0