Qualla: Reston, Virginia

Reston, Virginia: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Koroboro, CC BY-SA 4.0. Robert E. Simon opened the gates of Reston on his fiftieth birthday - April 10, 1964 - and named the place after his own initials. He had bought 6,750 acres of the Bowman family's whiskey farm in northern Fairfax County and hired a Walter Gropius-trained architect named James Rossant to design what would become one of the most influential planned communities in postwar America. Reston's village centers, walkable paths, manmade lakes, and aggressive preservation of tree canopy were meant to demonstrate that suburbs could be built better. Sixty years later, 63,226 people live in Reston. The trees are still there. Robert E. Simon lived to be 101, watched his town grow up, and died in a Reston apartment overlooking Lake Anne Plaza in 2015.

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Image: Koroboro | CC BY-SA 4.0

Reston, Virginia: From Bowman Whiskey to Wiehle's Dream

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joshua Davis, CC BY-SA 2.5. The land that became Reston was part of the original 1660 Northern Neck Proprietary grant from Charles II to Lord Fairfax - the same massive land claim that produced most of Northern Virginia. The Fairfaxes held it until 1852. In 1886 Carl A. Wiehle and William Dunn bought 6,449 ...

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Image: Joshua Davis | CC BY-SA 2.5

Reston, Virginia: Lake Anne and the New Town

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ser Amantio di Nicolao, CC BY-SA 3.0. Simon hired the firm of Whittlesey, Conklin & Rossant to draw the master plan. James Rossant had studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard. His partner William J. Conklin came out of the modernist tradition. They designed Reston not as a subdivision but as a unified town with five ...

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Image: Ser Amantio di Nicolao | CC BY-SA 3.0

Reston, Virginia: The Gulf Oil Years

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Axamir Uploaded by Axamir at en.wikipedia, Public domain. Simon's vision was expensive. Townhouses in Reston cost as much as detached single-family houses elsewhere in Fairfax County, and sales were sluggish in the first years. To pay creditors, Simon accepted a $15 million loan from Gulf Oil in 1965. By 1967 Gulf had forced him out and...

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Image: Axamir Uploaded by Axamir at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Reston, Virginia: Reston Virus

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Nutini, CC BY-SA 3.0. In late 1989 an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever began killing crab-eating macaques at a primate quarantine facility operated by Hazleton Research Products at 1946 Isaac Newton Square in Reston. The animals had come from a breeding center in the Philippines. Initial tests at the U.S...

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Image: Karen Nutini | CC BY-SA 3.0

Reston, Virginia: What Reston Looks Like Now

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donnarg, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the air Reston reads as a dense canopy of green broken by four manmade lakes - Lake Anne, Lake Audubon, Lake Newport, and Lake Thoreau - and threaded by curving roads and 55 miles of walking trails. Tree cover protected by aggressive design review still covers about half the...

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Image: Donnarg | CC BY-SA 4.0