Richmond Highway, Also Known as: U.S. Route 1

Route 1, begun in 1926 and running 2,377 miles from Fort Kent, Maine, to Key West, Florida, is the easternmost U.S. national highway and connects such cities as Miami, Richmond, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, and Portland.

Prior to 1926, our roads were numbered haphazardly and most interstates changed designations at the state border. You could be traveling on one numbered route in Maine and be on the same road by the time you reached Maryland, but you would have been on a half dozen differently named streets.

But the Joint Board of Interstate Highways settled on Route 1 for the entire extension and began to have the states through which it traversed add the designation along with whatever local nomenclature had become commonplace. So you have Route 1 signs along the Pulanski Skyway in New Jersey, along the Overseas Highway in Florida and along our neighborhood route.

By 1950, with the construction of the Interstate Highway System, Interstate 95 (I-95) became the major north-south highway, though it is shorter (1,925 miles) and has yet to be completed (expected in 2018). But that multilane interstate simply became the bypass road of choice for those traveling non-stop, north to south, across 15 states. If you actually wanted to stop off to see any of the states you were traversing, you were much better served by switching to Route 1, which, because it is made up of so many localized chunks, has retained each state’s character along its home stretch.

In Virginia Route 1 is known as Jefferson Davis Highway and in our neck of the woods we know it as Richmond Highway. For us, it is the central artery of our community and the go-to location for goods and services. Most of us use the road to commute or shop daily or cross it to visit friends and relatives. It is home to every conceivable business, residence, and organization from a classic Krispy Kreme shop to the latest Starbucks and Gold’s Gym, from pawn shops and eating dives to Staples office supplies, and from county government offices to hotels, single homes, and apartment complexes.

The route has had many lives and news stories told about each, it also continues to be a focal point for Fairfax County redevelopment. Among its intricacies, Richmond Highway has had an erratic development history and continues to have such a mix of land use that property valuations for plots of land that are next to each other are intriguingly inconsistent.

In one 183 yard stretch, from 6831 to 7014, one saw a single home dwelling valued at $178,870, next to a vacant lot valued at $510,000 that had last sold in 2009 for $1,005,000, which in turn was next to a 5-story apartment building on 116,000 square feet valued at just over $13 million. Two next door businesses, a few doors down had been in their locations 32 and three years respectively and two next door resident neighbors, several addresses down, had been there 27 and two years respectively.

In a series of articles we will be exploring the significance of Route 1 to our community and the growth and development of our home stretch, and we will profile a few long-time and some new businesses along its Hybla Valley length.